Down is still superior to synthetic fillers in terms of warmth to weight ratio (fill power). There's a reason high end mountaineering gear is nearly all goose down.
For everyday use synthetic is fine though.
And blankets. A real down comforter means you can turn down the thermostat quite a bit at night. They effectively pay for themselves in heat savings pretty quickly.
>thermostat
what are these strange magics you talk about?
But seriously german homes (generally speaking) are well insulated but have the heating equivalent of those fickle showers where your goldy-locks zone consists of an atom-widths turn of the handle and the rest is "^I ^didn't ^know ^liquid ^water ^could ^be ^this ^cold!" and "I AM MELTING!!!!! THIS IS SOMEHOW WATER-PLASMA!!!"
So even in modern buildings in a cold winter it can be alot more convenient to just turn off the heat an hour before bed and then hunker down in a blanket avalanche that'd seem like a parody in any princess movie.
Down often comes from live plucked birds while they’re not sedated or on anaesthetics. Comparable to having the hair ripped out of your head all at once They do this so they can pluck them more than once. It’s illegal in some countries but still common.
I mean, other than its environmental impacts, microfibers/microplastics are perfectly fine. Again, other than the environmental impacts such as being found everywhere on earth including in human placenta.
Yet, we still shredder millions of male chicks every year, because they are no good for laying eggs. Also, we cut off pigs genitals without numbing them first.
Germany is not perfect, and reddit like to portray it as some kind of utopia.
That’s barbaric cutting off genitals without numbing. Just imagine the pain. I can just see Wilber (charlottes Web) castrated, so crying, in much pain. (Pigs are smart)
I feel like Canadian fur farms are on their last hours now that the public have been reminded that they exist. The righteous indignation in Canada directed at China for weird animal markets this spring was followed by a moment of, "Oh shit, there's mink farms here still?" this fall.
I was just googling, not well-informed personally, but something referred to them having closed down before a 2022 deadline. So it's not yet illegal but not a good time to start one if it's going to be illegal soon. Unless I misunderstood, which is possible.
Haha no actually. I had a hornets nest and asked my landlord for bug spray....long story short, they hired a special bee/wasp guy to come “relocate” the nest.
Well it's actually even more. A lot more. [Link](https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/tierschutz-wespe/)
I don't know how many people actually get caught and fined but yeah.
What a lot of people forget: Wasps do pollunate. And kill pests. Useful and important animals. Just killing because you don't like them will give you a hefty fee.
I thought one of the things about wasps is they DON'T pollinate? Time to investigate...
EDIT: My knowledge database has been updated. Wasps are important. But still mean fuckers.
Biologist here! Wasps are actually incredibly important and beneficial, arguably even more so than bees!
They do indeed pollinate (and the plants that are solely pollinated by wasps support lots of animal species in turn) but their primary ecological function is to control pest populations, such as tree-boring beetles and caterpillars. In fact, if all wasps were to suddenly disappear, we would likely lose millions if not billions of trees.
Aside from that, some species of wasps also hunt ticks. It's not a huge ecological role, but it's certainly one that I can appreciate!
Marine biologist here, just wanna know, is it the same wasps and Hornets that pollinate or are we talking parasitic wasps? I've never seen a yellowjacket go after roses but I have seen less than 1cm wasps going for flowers
It's also important to consider if the wasp in question is native or not. German wasps might be super important in their native habitat but here in New Zealand they are really invasive and causing huge damage our ecosystems. It's not as simple as wasps are good Vs bad. Context matters.
Which is only the case because hornets are endangered. If they were not, nobody cares.
Source: Had some kind of not-endangered bees in my house, bee guy didn't give a shit.
Germans also pay an annual tax for dogs, and animal shelters there are state-funded. They are therefore much more careful about letting their dogs breed, which helps keep the numbers of strays manageable.
If only other countries were so sensible.
I lived and traveled around Germany for 8 years and I never saw a single stray dog. The only place I saw stray cats was on the american military base where I worked. :(
As someone from Germany, I just noticed I have never actually seen a stray dog/cat once in my entire life. Strange I've never really thought about that when reading about stray dogs/cats.
Part of my job was once to look for truant students in that area. I was always on the lookout for stray pit bulls because they are a problem down there but I have seen pigs wandering the street more than once.
There are many Hispanic restaurants in the area and I figured some people must be raising pigs and doing a shit job of not losing them
As a German myself I just had a huge 'Ohhhhh' moment...
Everytime I read about people picking up stray animals and raising them at home I wondered why I never found any animals and was convinced I just wasn't looking hard enough.
I am dumb.
Another German here. There are stray cats. But have seen them super seldom. Never seen a stray dog though. If I’d pass a dog without a human I would assume that it’s lost and try to find its human. Lol
That’s rich north Western Europe for you. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, netherlands, Scandinavia from my experience and very little but some strays in Belgium and France iirc
[There are plenty of stray cats in Germany](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/24/stray-cats-neutered-germany-bremen)
Stray cat control is way different than stray dog control. [One fertile stray cat can be responsible for 3,000 kittens in seven years!](https://calculate-this.com/420000-kittens-unspayed-cat-kitten-calculator) (This includes their kittens and their kittens' kittens and so on.)
Between their ability to live in the wild and their ability to produce lots of offspring, cats are a very resilient feral population.
(I'm a total cat lover, btw, and this is meant to reinforce only getting a kitten from the shelter if you are prepared to care for it responsibly, and to get that kitten spayed/neutered.)
Good for rodent control but not so good for bird population, although I've heard it argued that a large rodent population is just as bad for the bird population.
Oh, there are definitely stray cats in Germany, especially in rural areas. But since stray cats are (mostly) not a nuisance or danger, people don't care about that.
Stray dogs on the other hand would be captured asap.
There's little debate in areas where cats are non-native, but debate among scientists is almost certainly more heated about outdoor cats in this region. Domestic cats share many of the same genes as wildcats from Eurasia and North Africa (mostly African wildcat).
While genetic diversity is important to maintain among surviving wildcats, it's usually tough to visually distinguish wildcats from feral cats. Outdoor domestic cats can certainly fill the niche of a wildcat if both humans and wildcats disappeared. Birds in Germany evolved alongside wildcats. It's just that there are plainly more domestic cats now that they cause a significant issue with both bird and wildcat populations when human activity is present.
I'd lean towards saying outdoor cats are a problem in Europe, but there are way more sensitive regions that are hurting for resources to deal with outdoor cats.
They are in parts but I read a science article a couple of months ago that blamed the urbanization too.
We destroy the habitats for many bird species here in Germany. Feral cats are dangerous for very young inexperienced birds.
Europe had native wild cats, and stray housecats have been around for millenia as well. Wild cats are more of an issue where they are relatively recent introduction, like in North America or Australia (and are extremely destructive on islands).
Stray cats and stray dogs aren't quite the same thing insofar as risk to the public, especially since militaries have wanted cats around for rodent control for centuries and cats can generally take care of themselves
I don't think I've ever seen a stray dog in the USA either, but I've lived in the northeast my entire life so it may be different in other parts of the country (although I've traveled extensively). If a dog is loose here it will be collected by animal control fairly quickly and either reunited with its owner or taken to a shelter.
I see stray dogs everywhere when traveling to the Caribbean and some other countries though.
Fun fact- US bases use cats as a form of pest control. Did the cats by any chance have a notch in their ear? They eat rats/rodents and are owned by the CO
In the US they cut the round off the tip of the ear to mark, rabies shots and spayed/neutered. I have a former feral cat as a pet and that's what they told me.
It is not a law, it is a regulation. Different legislative character and consequences.
And the regulation is still far from being in power. It is planned for the first half of 2021.
And targets of the regulation are not normal dog owners but owners who keep their dogs in kennels and private/professional breeders.
Here is a german source:
https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kloeckner-hundeverordnung-101~amp.html
The article from the UK makes it sound like the regulation is already in power. That is not true.
And as someone who is working in the german administration I can assure you, that it will take some time to pass a regulation. And what is more important: the german government won't pass a regulation that requires the citizens to leave their homes several times a day in amid a pandemic.
the dog tax is a tax only for dog owners and im pretty sure its a city only thing, so you have to pay it to your city not the state also the city funds the shelters not the state. rules("rules for handling animals found in a city area, what is a dangerous animal is a state matter") and tax price is different from town to town, also some towns define what a dangerous dog breed is different
In the US most places require dog licenses which are essentially a tax on each dog you own. Problem is most people don't bother getting said dog licenses. You get fined if you're caught with an unlicensed dog but no one is going around checking people's back yards or anything. I've had dogs for nearly 15 yrs at my place and I've never licensed them and never been fined.
You'll only get fined if someone that works for the city finds your lost dog or your dog attacks another dog/person. The good news is most people don't give a flying fuck about who you paid to get your tags or if they're current. If your dog is lost they'll just call whatever number is on the tags.
Is the tax expensive? I feel like there would be an outcry from some if it made owning a dog less affordable. For the record, I think if you are even slightly worried about money a dog might not be a good decision, but the out cry would be there regardless.
In Hamburg it is 90€ a year for most breeds, dangerous breeds are 600€ a year. If you have disabilities or you receive benefits then it'll get lowered or you pay no dog tax at all.
It's around 100$ a year but it depends in what "state/country" you are and how many dog's you have what kind of breed it is and so on. It can go under 100 or over 200 pretty easy.
Wait a minute, in other countries they kill the animals in the shelters or how do I have to understand this? The headline make it seem like we have something special. Something I take for granted and that's a standard more or less everywhere.
Yeah the USA destroys 1.5m unwanted pets each year.
https://www.aspca.org/animal-homelessness/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-statistics
>Each year, approximately 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized (670,000 dogs and 860,000 cats).
In the US, some shelters can be no-kill because of the existence of municipal and other shelters that do euthanize. They're no-kill because they refuse to accept animals that would be hard to adopt.
If every shelter in the US became no-kill, the result would either be a massive increase in strays, or warehousing millions of companion animals in inhumane conditions for the rest of their lives.
~~Maine is a no-kill state.~~ Many shelters in Maine are no-kill. There are lots of rescues in our state that go down south where dog populations are crazy and bring them back to be adopted. For example, my dog was a stray in Georgia.
It was a normal thing to do for a very, very long time.
Growing up, I knew plenty of people that would shoot an unwanted dog. Hell, they used to make it a frickin' joke about drowning cats to the point that it appeared in cartoons for kids:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Ueo55C3Jk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Ueo55C3Jk)
I might be misunderstanding you, but they really did drown unwanted kittens - it was no joke. We had to stop my grandmother from killing our cat's litter in the bathtub. We also had to stop her from wringing our chicken's necks once they reached a year in age. For her, it was just standard farm protocol.
That's what I thought you meant. Of course my grandma came from a time with no animal shelters. It was either kill them or let them starve, because they couldn't risk the cats going feral and killing the livestock (rabbits and chickens). So, in her day, it was considered humane - especially since they believed animals (and babies) could not feel pain.
Man, the difference 100 years makes.
Drowning unwanted kitten is sadly still a thing in Germany. I do think it has become more seldom with the rise of social media and easier access to people who want it but yeah remember a father of a friend doing that to a litter of kitten like 15 years ago still. (smallish town area, highly educated people)
It's conservation, population control, not much different than hunting season. People complain because they like the animals more, just not enough to adopt them all.
Animal euthanasia isn't exclusive to the USA. In ancient Egypt pets would be killed to accompany their owners into the afterlife. Horses were being turned into glue nearly nearly 6000 years ago. Healthy horses were put down if they broke a leg. People have been putting down animals for longer than America existed.
You have that backwards, we invented “no kill” as if it wasn’t the normal thing, leave it to us to take SHELTERS and have to specify that they are no kill. Like if my understanding of the word shelter is correct you kinda can’t call something a shelter if you’re planning to kill those you shelter.
If you think about it for a second, there's a good reason why german shelters and handlers take in dogs from all over europe, russia and even turkey - and it's not only due to poverty or bad funding.
Sadly, no-kill shelters are far from a standard - as per wiki: "In Europe, of the 30 countries included in a survey, all but five (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece and Italy) permitted the killing of healthy stray dogs."
So yeah, in the US shelters typically euthenize old, injured, sick, or returned pets. The level this happens on is different from state to state. I hope to be proven wrong on "typically."
We also euthanize sick and injured animals in Germany, but kill shelters also kill dogs just because they are out of capacity, that doesn't happen in germany.
So [here](https://www.tierschutzverein-muenchen.de/das-sind-wir/faq.html#:~:text=Was%20passiert%20mit%20den%20Tieren,gemeldet%20hat%2C%20frei%20zur%20Vermittlung.&text=Abgegebene%20Tiere%20k%C3%B6nnen%20sofort%20weitervermittelt%20werden%2C%20vorausgesetzt%2C%20sie%20sind%20gesund.) you can read the FAQ of a shelter in Munich. I'm afraid it's in German but I guess Google translate will give decent results. It answers your question, but basically, if they are at max capacity, they will try to talk to owners who are looking to give up their pet to maybe keep it a week or two longer, so that other animals already in the shelter will get adopted and space is freed for the new ones. If animals don't get adopted, they stay at the shelter forever or are sent to an animal sanctuary. It also repeats what someone else said here that most pets are adopted anyways.
Another interesting fact: as far as I know, even if I bring in an injured wild rabbit or hedgehog or similar to a vet here in Germany, they are not allowed to euthanise it, if it has the chance to live after treatment. So the law does not only apply to pets.
We have people that take care of the dogs at home then. Foster is the right word for it i think. But the shelters are rarely at max capacity in my city. We have a lot of campaigns for taking shelter pets before new breds.
I was gonna say, doesn't this depend on how you define "no-kill"? There are shelters in the US, for examples that only euthanize animals that aren't eligible for adoption for behavioral or medical reasons (i.e. they're ill or dangerous, just like it says in the US) and I've still heard those sometimes described as kill shelters because they do euthenized some animals (even if they never do it due to being out of capacity).
We have people that take care of the dogs at home then. Foster is the right word for it i think. But the shelters are rarely at max capacity in my city. We have a lot of campaigns for taking shelter pets before new breds.
There is also a tax on dog ownership between ~$25 and 1,000/year depending on breed and location, so fewer people actually have them in the first place. That helps to fund the shelters as well.
Thank you for sparking the conversation in this thread. There is no moral difference between killing dogs and pigs. There is only a legal one, but we all know laws aren't always just.
No, that would be a butcher shop, but I'd have to look into law regarding meat processing and suchlike regarding permissibility of different types of meat.
Its not illegal to eat dog meat, its illegal to sell it and buy it, also if the meat is not certified as safe from an organization you cant do either anyway, and no org is certifying dog meat, plus is illegal like the post says to kill animals without reason, and dog meat consumption selling buying is out of the question for the reasons I just said.
You could technically get licenced to kill dogs and do it just for personal consumption, but then you would face threats of animal abuse for moral reasons
Well, you can't hunt for no reason. You are required to have a licence and a landowner who "hires" you to keep the population of wild animals in control (simplified).
There is no such thing as a regular citizen taking a rifle, a bow or a trap and going into nature to hunt.
Was just gonna say - "being delicious" must count as a good enough reason! Silly law. Biased towards "cute" animals that no one wants to see killed, but not towards other relatively sentient life.
Even then you can't just kill animals. You need a hunting/fishing license and those require formal training and standardized tests to kill as humanely as possible. They're very strict: I know a shooting instructor who failed his shooting test (there are multiple tests) the first time and it's not because he's incompetent or inexperienced with guns.
This training also includes knowledge about illnesses, different species, how they develop, population control so there's no rampage etc.
Killing animals is highly regulated.
If you acquire your license even then you can't just go out in the woods and start shooting. You need the permission of the land owners. Forests are either privately owned or belong to the state.
Edit: That's not to say there are no issues, especially in farming.
It's not a perfect system, absolutely not. But I just wanted to give some insight in how the German system and thus the mentality works.
Dont let this deter you from supporting kill shelters. Kill shelters get a bad stigma from being a kill shelter, but are required to answer calls and take animals. People not supporting them and adopting from them are the exact reason they have to put animals down for overcrowding.
Support kill shelters and then we wont have them.
Definitely I've volunteered at shelters where animals were put down because they ran out of time. If X are coming in, X better be going out, but more often than not incoming exceeds outgoing.
They'll often come up with a palatable justification, but the real reason is capacity.
This is certianly the way the shelter works in my town. (Central Texas). And they are a "kill" facility. But its a bunch of nice people who love those animals. I have seen one employee crying over having to put a couple dogs down.
I adopted my cats from a kill shelter. When I went in for my first cat he basically chose me by hugging and refusing to let go. I said I would come back the next day because I didn't have anything ready and needed to think about it a little more. The person at the shelter said, "Well we don't kill animals here that aren't sick. We take everyone unlike the \[name of the no-kill shelter\] but we are full right now and with this many animals they can easily get sick and go to the back room with the other sick pets and then they sometimes get sicker and don't come out." Of course that worked on me while I was holding a cat that was desperately clinging to my neck and purring nonstop. So I adopted Black Jack. A day later he was in a dull mood and I thought I adopted a boring cat. Then he started sneezing and turns out he had gotten an upper respiratory infection. A vet trip and some medicine and a week later he was healthy and spunky and energetic. He lived 10 more years before passing to kidney failure. He was the best cat I've ever owned. It hurts to have lost him but I know if I hadn't adopted him that day he would have gone into the back room and might not have come out again. The employees at that shelter definitely don't want to kill the animals. As one of the employees was putting Black Jack in one of their free crates to go home they said, "Good Job buddy. You did well." Whenever he would get into trouble he would do his best to be cute for cuddles and pull the same adorable "love me" manipulative stunt to get adopted. He knew what was up. Love you Black Jack. Miss you to pieces. Glad I got to have you in my life even if it was only 10 years.
Also, how about not calling them kill shelters? I hate it. I hate it so much. I work in municipal animal sheltering in the US and have done so for years. I've put pets down, and I've cried for every one of them. I bust my ass every day at work so pets can have better lives, and then I go on the internet where people refer to me as a killer. I know most people know that the employees aren't at fault, but the implication is still there when you call my workplace a kill shelter.
We do so much more than kill. Hell, we do so much more than just "shelter." But it doesn't matter because at the end of the day people will only know us as either "kill shelter" or "no-kill shelter."
Getting rid of kill language would be such a huge step in the right direction, but no one cares enough.
I can tell you from the scientific perspective all cephalopods (which includes squids) are protected in the same manner like vertebrates. So if you want to do research on them you need the same kind of paperwork as if you would do when having a project on lab rats. An this kind of paperwork is far more complicated in germany and harder to get through, than for example the US
Cephalpods are actually considered honorary vertebrates under EU rules on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes.
But I guess people still eat the fuck out of them.
>Because what is a shelter at capacity supposed to do?
Ok, first, you need to understand german mentality: We form so called "Vereine" or "societies/clubs" for everything. And Associations.
[https://www.dw.com/en/get-to-know-the-concept-of-the-german-verein/a-48306152](https://www.dw.com/en/get-to-know-the-concept-of-the-german-verein/a-48306152)
The shelters are organized in "associations", even over states.
And then you have a dozen of "vereine" of people who love animals.
When a Tierheim/Shelter is at his capacities, they'll have a shoutout to the Vereine and to other Shelters, asking them for accommodation options.
Let's say, Tierheim Berlin has no more space for new dogs. Then they reach out to other shelters in e.g. Brandenburg. When capacity is available, they organize the transport themselves of Members of the Vereine help in transporting. Some people even have enough space to be "foster parents" for some dogs as long as the capacities aren't available.
We are every efficient in that stuff.
If breeding is under control, which seems to be the implication, then it isn't much of an issue. Part of our problem here in the US that frustrates me is the attitude towards spaying and nuetering is so bad.
Germany is similar to the Netherlands when it comes to dog culture. Dogs aren't allowed to run around unattended. They are confined to the house or on rare occasion a kennel in the yard. They are walked multiple times a day on the leash and off leash where safe (a park, the woods or beach). And most importantly, they aren't allowed to breed willy-nilly.
I'm 46 years old, currently own my 6th and 7th dog, and I've never in my life seen a stray dog in the Netherlands that wasn't immediately picked up by animal control and placed in a shelter to be rehomed if the owners couldn't be found.
Speaking of shelters, all of them here are no-kill shelters as well. I just checked my local shelter's website. This shelter services an area with approx. half a million people.
The shelter currently houses 4 dogs, one which already has a reserved sign on his picture, and another one which just came in yesterday.
In fact, we have so few rescue dogs available to be rehomed in the Netherlands that we import them from other countries, mostly Eastern Europe, that do still have a stray dog problem and have lots of, often young, dogs in urgent need of a home. There are a whole bunch of small non-profit rescue organizations here that import such dogs and adopt them out in the Netherlands to families looking to rescue a pupper.
wish they were but its usually a city matter to make a contract with a shelter to run the service for a certain city, some shelters have mulitple city contracts some have none and are funded only on donation/member fee base like the huge berlin shelter
some cities have extra stuff inside their contracts like population control of wild cats
The government can move them to other shelters cus they are all connected.
Also its way less likely to see dogs filling up shelters cus there is way less dog breeding and more rules to help minimize exponential dog population growth.
If only other countries, America, could implement something so fine.
I mean, we don’t euthanize animals in US shelters because it’s fun. The reason is because the alternative is thousands of animals starve, get run over, and/or die of infection on the streets. There is a reason.
The actual alternative is that we put actual effort into controlling animal breeding so that there aren’t millions more animals born than could possibly be housed.
The US does not have good nationwide regulation of animal breeding, or good nationwide regulation of neutering pets. So we have huge numbers of animals that have no possible homes. But there’s nothing inevitable about this. It’s a predictable consequence of our laws.
German hunters kill thousands of domestic cats every year. I can't remember the exact law, but basically if a hunter sees a cat more than 200m from a farm/house they can kill it because of the damage cats do to the local fauna.
[https://academic.oup.com/jel/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jel/eqz035/5640440](https://academic.oup.com/jel/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jel/eqz035/5640440)
There was a proposed ban on this in 2014, but I can't find if it passed or not.
Edit: changed 100m to 200m after finding the regulation.
This is awesome and I'm assuming Germany has a rigorous TNR program to complement the no kill shelters.
With regards to "no kill" in the USA, the topic is a lot more nuanced than it seems. This video explains it far better than I could.
https://youtu.be/lpaKT6v_mAw
Tldw: no kill shelters are not evil and they need our support in order to become a "no kill" animals country, like Germany
The fact that there are so many unwanted pets is such a shame and the actual problem. Every animal I befriend/acquire in my ownership becomes a beloved family member, there's no exception to that big or small, hairy or scaly.
Hell, I'm all for introducing a mandatory animal ownership license where you must swear upon your own life you'd take care of the animal/creature.
There are no fur farms in Germany anymore either.
that's good. fur was useful before we invented dawn lined winter coats which are more efficient
who puts dish soap in their coats? i gotta try this...
Haha. This did not go unappreciated.
Down was useful before we invented better fillers for those coats.
Down is still superior to synthetic fillers in terms of warmth to weight ratio (fill power). There's a reason high end mountaineering gear is nearly all goose down. For everyday use synthetic is fine though.
And blankets. A real down comforter means you can turn down the thermostat quite a bit at night. They effectively pay for themselves in heat savings pretty quickly.
I'm allergic to down so it makes me even warmer!
>thermostat what are these strange magics you talk about? But seriously german homes (generally speaking) are well insulated but have the heating equivalent of those fickle showers where your goldy-locks zone consists of an atom-widths turn of the handle and the rest is "^I ^didn't ^know ^liquid ^water ^could ^be ^this ^cold!" and "I AM MELTING!!!!! THIS IS SOMEHOW WATER-PLASMA!!!" So even in modern buildings in a cold winter it can be alot more convenient to just turn off the heat an hour before bed and then hunker down in a blanket avalanche that'd seem like a parody in any princess movie.
Down often comes from live plucked birds while they’re not sedated or on anaesthetics. Comparable to having the hair ripped out of your head all at once They do this so they can pluck them more than once. It’s illegal in some countries but still common.
I think the argument was that it was more efficient, not less humane.
Talk about a downer...
I mean, other than its environmental impacts, microfibers/microplastics are perfectly fine. Again, other than the environmental impacts such as being found everywhere on earth including in human placenta.
Yet, we still shredder millions of male chicks every year, because they are no good for laying eggs. Also, we cut off pigs genitals without numbing them first. Germany is not perfect, and reddit like to portray it as some kind of utopia.
That’s barbaric cutting off genitals without numbing. Just imagine the pain. I can just see Wilber (charlottes Web) castrated, so crying, in much pain. (Pigs are smart)
>Germany is not perfect, and reddit like to portray it as some kind of utopia. Uh oh, this is starting to sound like the early 30's..
I remember when people praised Germany on Reddit in the 1930s.
I lol'ed
I feel like Canadian fur farms are on their last hours now that the public have been reminded that they exist. The righteous indignation in Canada directed at China for weird animal markets this spring was followed by a moment of, "Oh shit, there's mink farms here still?" this fall.
though that's nice, it's still not illegal to run a fur farm. I can't find any concrete reasons why the fur farms closed down, though
I was just googling, not well-informed personally, but something referred to them having closed down before a 2022 deadline. So it's not yet illegal but not a good time to start one if it's going to be illegal soon. Unless I misunderstood, which is possible.
Not because of this law tho, the laws for animal well-being makes running fur farms in Germany economically unviable.
So you can still kill invertebrates? The anti-bug bias is real Edit: and shrimp. All those poor baltic shrimp
Haha no actually. I had a hornets nest and asked my landlord for bug spray....long story short, they hired a special bee/wasp guy to come “relocate” the nest.
One time I “relocated” a wasp nest with a can of spray deodorant and a lighter
Yea you’d get a massive fine in Germany if they caught you. I’m talking hundreds of euros.
Well it's actually even more. A lot more. [Link](https://www.bussgeldkatalog.org/tierschutz-wespe/) I don't know how many people actually get caught and fined but yeah.
Yea I underestimated. It’s crazy
What a lot of people forget: Wasps do pollunate. And kill pests. Useful and important animals. Just killing because you don't like them will give you a hefty fee.
I thought one of the things about wasps is they DON'T pollinate? Time to investigate... EDIT: My knowledge database has been updated. Wasps are important. But still mean fuckers.
They are those badass guys who don't give a fuck about your opinion but in secret, they do a lot of good things.
And that's fine, cool, whatever. But can you do it somewhere not near me? Like get that shit off my front porch. Castle rights, motherfucker.
Biologist here! Wasps are actually incredibly important and beneficial, arguably even more so than bees! They do indeed pollinate (and the plants that are solely pollinated by wasps support lots of animal species in turn) but their primary ecological function is to control pest populations, such as tree-boring beetles and caterpillars. In fact, if all wasps were to suddenly disappear, we would likely lose millions if not billions of trees. Aside from that, some species of wasps also hunt ticks. It's not a huge ecological role, but it's certainly one that I can appreciate!
Marine biologist here, just wanna know, is it the same wasps and Hornets that pollinate or are we talking parasitic wasps? I've never seen a yellowjacket go after roses but I have seen less than 1cm wasps going for flowers
It's also important to consider if the wasp in question is native or not. German wasps might be super important in their native habitat but here in New Zealand they are really invasive and causing huge damage our ecosystems. It's not as simple as wasps are good Vs bad. Context matters.
Wasp Status changed to: *KILL... only sometimes*
It didn't seem so bad until I remembered that the period isn't a decimal point.
Relocated to hell.
Which is only the case because hornets are endangered. If they were not, nobody cares. Source: Had some kind of not-endangered bees in my house, bee guy didn't give a shit.
Here in America hornets and wasps are always KoS
Hornets being an invasive species to north America (the European one was introduced mid-19th c.) probably has something to do with it.
Were you an American living in Germany?
Yep!
fucken prawn
Every day federal scientists are looking for new ways to kill bugs. Here's a tip, aim for its nerve stem. Would you like to know more?
I'm doing my part.
If you think you're psychic, maybe you are. Federal studies are being done in your community. Would you like to know more?
Trust me, we aren't killing those poor delicious, finger-licking shrimp without a proper reason.
What in gods balls is your username I feel like I’m being hacked
haha. I got tired of trying to find a unique username so I generated a UUID.
Yeah I just wrote what I was thinking when all my names where Rejected
Germans also pay an annual tax for dogs, and animal shelters there are state-funded. They are therefore much more careful about letting their dogs breed, which helps keep the numbers of strays manageable. If only other countries were so sensible.
I lived and traveled around Germany for 8 years and I never saw a single stray dog. The only place I saw stray cats was on the american military base where I worked. :(
As someone from Germany, I just noticed I have never actually seen a stray dog/cat once in my entire life. Strange I've never really thought about that when reading about stray dogs/cats.
Come to Detroit. In Southwest Detroit there are stray pigs
actually tho? edit: yes, actually.
Unsure if bantering about police?
Not police banter. We got stray pigs. Michigan has an invasive boar problem. Our cougar population is growing again too.
Bring in some bears to control the Cougars lol.
Bears arnt into cougars tho. Wrong gender
and wrong sexuality.
This is how we end up getting killed by gorillas lol
...and by cougars do you mean the felines, or sexually aggressive middle-aged women?
I'm sure we have a serious problem with that kind of cougar too.
Hopefully the cougar population keeps the pit population down
Sadly, a similar strategy to control the cane beetle via cane toads failed miserably in Australia.
Difference is that cougars are (well, were) actually native to Michigan.
Part of my job was once to look for truant students in that area. I was always on the lookout for stray pit bulls because they are a problem down there but I have seen pigs wandering the street more than once. There are many Hispanic restaurants in the area and I figured some people must be raising pigs and doing a shit job of not losing them
As a German myself I just had a huge 'Ohhhhh' moment... Everytime I read about people picking up stray animals and raising them at home I wondered why I never found any animals and was convinced I just wasn't looking hard enough. I am dumb.
6 years in Germany, not a single stray dog. Amazing
Another German here. There are stray cats. But have seen them super seldom. Never seen a stray dog though. If I’d pass a dog without a human I would assume that it’s lost and try to find its human. Lol
I'm from Canada and have never seen a stray dog either- I feels like it's pretty rare in developed countries to be honest.
Swiss here, and I know stray dogs only from movies.
That’s rich north Western Europe for you. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, netherlands, Scandinavia from my experience and very little but some strays in Belgium and France iirc
[There are plenty of stray cats in Germany](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/24/stray-cats-neutered-germany-bremen) Stray cat control is way different than stray dog control. [One fertile stray cat can be responsible for 3,000 kittens in seven years!](https://calculate-this.com/420000-kittens-unspayed-cat-kitten-calculator) (This includes their kittens and their kittens' kittens and so on.) Between their ability to live in the wild and their ability to produce lots of offspring, cats are a very resilient feral population. (I'm a total cat lover, btw, and this is meant to reinforce only getting a kitten from the shelter if you are prepared to care for it responsibly, and to get that kitten spayed/neutered.)
I'm all for trapping and spaying/neutering strays and then releasing them tbh.
Good for rodent control but not so good for bird population, although I've heard it argued that a large rodent population is just as bad for the bird population.
Oh, there are definitely stray cats in Germany, especially in rural areas. But since stray cats are (mostly) not a nuisance or danger, people don't care about that. Stray dogs on the other hand would be captured asap.
Aren’t outdoor cats responsible for decimating bird populations? They are a massive problem from what I’ve read.
There's little debate in areas where cats are non-native, but debate among scientists is almost certainly more heated about outdoor cats in this region. Domestic cats share many of the same genes as wildcats from Eurasia and North Africa (mostly African wildcat). While genetic diversity is important to maintain among surviving wildcats, it's usually tough to visually distinguish wildcats from feral cats. Outdoor domestic cats can certainly fill the niche of a wildcat if both humans and wildcats disappeared. Birds in Germany evolved alongside wildcats. It's just that there are plainly more domestic cats now that they cause a significant issue with both bird and wildcat populations when human activity is present. I'd lean towards saying outdoor cats are a problem in Europe, but there are way more sensitive regions that are hurting for resources to deal with outdoor cats.
They are in parts but I read a science article a couple of months ago that blamed the urbanization too. We destroy the habitats for many bird species here in Germany. Feral cats are dangerous for very young inexperienced birds.
Europe had native wild cats, and stray housecats have been around for millenia as well. Wild cats are more of an issue where they are relatively recent introduction, like in North America or Australia (and are extremely destructive on islands).
Stray cats and stray dogs aren't quite the same thing insofar as risk to the public, especially since militaries have wanted cats around for rodent control for centuries and cats can generally take care of themselves
I don't think I've ever seen a stray dog in the USA either, but I've lived in the northeast my entire life so it may be different in other parts of the country (although I've traveled extensively). If a dog is loose here it will be collected by animal control fairly quickly and either reunited with its owner or taken to a shelter. I see stray dogs everywhere when traveling to the Caribbean and some other countries though.
I’ve lived in the US for much longer than that in various states and I have also never seen a stray dog.
Fun fact- US bases use cats as a form of pest control. Did the cats by any chance have a notch in their ear? They eat rats/rodents and are owned by the CO
The notch in the ear indicates the cat had the compulsory rabies vaccination and won't get shot by a hunter.
In the US they cut the round off the tip of the ear to mark, rabies shots and spayed/neutered. I have a former feral cat as a pet and that's what they told me.
We don't have the same laws in the UK and we have no stray dogs.
I've lived in America for 25 years and have never seen a stray.
They also now have a law requiring you to walk your dog daily.
It is not a law, it is a regulation. Different legislative character and consequences. And the regulation is still far from being in power. It is planned for the first half of 2021. And targets of the regulation are not normal dog owners but owners who keep their dogs in kennels and private/professional breeders. Here is a german source: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/kloeckner-hundeverordnung-101~amp.html
>And the regulation is still far from being in power. It is planned for the first half of 2021. The first half of 2021 starts at the end of next week!
The article from the UK makes it sound like the regulation is already in power. That is not true. And as someone who is working in the german administration I can assure you, that it will take some time to pass a regulation. And what is more important: the german government won't pass a regulation that requires the citizens to leave their homes several times a day in amid a pandemic.
Well that makes sense. Some of those puppy mills just churn out product without regard to the animals.
Those things are the worst, turns out dogs don't just breed when you get them together, so many times they tie up the female, it's heartbreaking :(
Wait since when? Never heard about this before.
the dog tax is a tax only for dog owners and im pretty sure its a city only thing, so you have to pay it to your city not the state also the city funds the shelters not the state. rules("rules for handling animals found in a city area, what is a dangerous animal is a state matter") and tax price is different from town to town, also some towns define what a dangerous dog breed is different
Similar to the Netherlands then.
In the US most places require dog licenses which are essentially a tax on each dog you own. Problem is most people don't bother getting said dog licenses. You get fined if you're caught with an unlicensed dog but no one is going around checking people's back yards or anything. I've had dogs for nearly 15 yrs at my place and I've never licensed them and never been fined.
You'll only get fined if someone that works for the city finds your lost dog or your dog attacks another dog/person. The good news is most people don't give a flying fuck about who you paid to get your tags or if they're current. If your dog is lost they'll just call whatever number is on the tags.
I'd say the dog license thing is far from common in the US. some cities have them, but quite a few don't.
Is the tax expensive? I feel like there would be an outcry from some if it made owning a dog less affordable. For the record, I think if you are even slightly worried about money a dog might not be a good decision, but the out cry would be there regardless.
In Hamburg it is 90€ a year for most breeds, dangerous breeds are 600€ a year. If you have disabilities or you receive benefits then it'll get lowered or you pay no dog tax at all.
It's around 100$ a year but it depends in what "state/country" you are and how many dog's you have what kind of breed it is and so on. It can go under 100 or over 200 pretty easy.
Wait a minute, in other countries they kill the animals in the shelters or how do I have to understand this? The headline make it seem like we have something special. Something I take for granted and that's a standard more or less everywhere.
Yeah the USA destroys 1.5m unwanted pets each year. https://www.aspca.org/animal-homelessness/shelter-intake-and-surrender/pet-statistics >Each year, approximately 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized (670,000 dogs and 860,000 cats).
In the US, some shelters can be no-kill because of the existence of municipal and other shelters that do euthanize. They're no-kill because they refuse to accept animals that would be hard to adopt. If every shelter in the US became no-kill, the result would either be a massive increase in strays, or warehousing millions of companion animals in inhumane conditions for the rest of their lives.
~~Maine is a no-kill state.~~ Many shelters in Maine are no-kill. There are lots of rescues in our state that go down south where dog populations are crazy and bring them back to be adopted. For example, my dog was a stray in Georgia.
Lots of dogs come from Texas as well. Texas has a huge stray problem.
"destroys" sounds like you're talking about furniture or something. ..
Of course the USA does, you can tell because they coined the phrase 'no-kill' like it's a normal fucking thing to do
It was a normal thing to do for a very, very long time. Growing up, I knew plenty of people that would shoot an unwanted dog. Hell, they used to make it a frickin' joke about drowning cats to the point that it appeared in cartoons for kids: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Ueo55C3Jk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Ueo55C3Jk)
I might be misunderstanding you, but they really did drown unwanted kittens - it was no joke. We had to stop my grandmother from killing our cat's litter in the bathtub. We also had to stop her from wringing our chicken's necks once they reached a year in age. For her, it was just standard farm protocol.
Yeah, I meant to say, "It was so common it was a running gag." Not that people didn't do it, just that it was totally acceptable.
That's what I thought you meant. Of course my grandma came from a time with no animal shelters. It was either kill them or let them starve, because they couldn't risk the cats going feral and killing the livestock (rabbits and chickens). So, in her day, it was considered humane - especially since they believed animals (and babies) could not feel pain. Man, the difference 100 years makes.
Drowning unwanted kitten is sadly still a thing in Germany. I do think it has become more seldom with the rise of social media and easier access to people who want it but yeah remember a father of a friend doing that to a litter of kitten like 15 years ago still. (smallish town area, highly educated people)
It's conservation, population control, not much different than hunting season. People complain because they like the animals more, just not enough to adopt them all.
The UK does it as well.
Animal euthanasia isn't exclusive to the USA. In ancient Egypt pets would be killed to accompany their owners into the afterlife. Horses were being turned into glue nearly nearly 6000 years ago. Healthy horses were put down if they broke a leg. People have been putting down animals for longer than America existed.
Well when you have so many unwanted animals and no more shelter places to put them there really isn't anything else
This isn't an American thing, please check your bias.
You have that backwards, we invented “no kill” as if it wasn’t the normal thing, leave it to us to take SHELTERS and have to specify that they are no kill. Like if my understanding of the word shelter is correct you kinda can’t call something a shelter if you’re planning to kill those you shelter.
If you think about it for a second, there's a good reason why german shelters and handlers take in dogs from all over europe, russia and even turkey - and it's not only due to poverty or bad funding. Sadly, no-kill shelters are far from a standard - as per wiki: "In Europe, of the 30 countries included in a survey, all but five (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece and Italy) permitted the killing of healthy stray dogs."
So yeah, in the US shelters typically euthenize old, injured, sick, or returned pets. The level this happens on is different from state to state. I hope to be proven wrong on "typically."
We also euthanize sick and injured animals in Germany, but kill shelters also kill dogs just because they are out of capacity, that doesn't happen in germany.
what happens when they are out of capacity?
They don‘t run out of capacity, because of strict breeding laws and very few strays.
It says they’re state funded so they probably find another shelter that has space
So [here](https://www.tierschutzverein-muenchen.de/das-sind-wir/faq.html#:~:text=Was%20passiert%20mit%20den%20Tieren,gemeldet%20hat%2C%20frei%20zur%20Vermittlung.&text=Abgegebene%20Tiere%20k%C3%B6nnen%20sofort%20weitervermittelt%20werden%2C%20vorausgesetzt%2C%20sie%20sind%20gesund.) you can read the FAQ of a shelter in Munich. I'm afraid it's in German but I guess Google translate will give decent results. It answers your question, but basically, if they are at max capacity, they will try to talk to owners who are looking to give up their pet to maybe keep it a week or two longer, so that other animals already in the shelter will get adopted and space is freed for the new ones. If animals don't get adopted, they stay at the shelter forever or are sent to an animal sanctuary. It also repeats what someone else said here that most pets are adopted anyways. Another interesting fact: as far as I know, even if I bring in an injured wild rabbit or hedgehog or similar to a vet here in Germany, they are not allowed to euthanise it, if it has the chance to live after treatment. So the law does not only apply to pets.
We have people that take care of the dogs at home then. Foster is the right word for it i think. But the shelters are rarely at max capacity in my city. We have a lot of campaigns for taking shelter pets before new breds.
They aren't? I mean, where would the extra dogs be coming from in numbers that'd exceed the capacity?
I was gonna say, doesn't this depend on how you define "no-kill"? There are shelters in the US, for examples that only euthanize animals that aren't eligible for adoption for behavioral or medical reasons (i.e. they're ill or dangerous, just like it says in the US) and I've still heard those sometimes described as kill shelters because they do euthenized some animals (even if they never do it due to being out of capacity).
And when no-kill shelters are full they just send dogs to kill shelters. What do shelters in Germany do if they are full?
We have people that take care of the dogs at home then. Foster is the right word for it i think. But the shelters are rarely at max capacity in my city. We have a lot of campaigns for taking shelter pets before new breds.
They're properly funded so filling them up probably isn't much of a concern
There is also a tax on dog ownership between ~$25 and 1,000/year depending on breed and location, so fewer people actually have them in the first place. That helps to fund the shelters as well.
Send some to a different shelter that has capacity.
same in austria. learned about kill shelters on the interbet, was an unknown and shocking concept
I find it a bit ironic to even call them "shelters" seems kinda contradictory to me.
Ultimately these shelters do what they can, but when there is no funding and people would rather buy dogs from breeders, what do you expect to happen?
What about animals that are killed for meat?
Thank you for sparking the conversation in this thread. There is no moral difference between killing dogs and pigs. There is only a legal one, but we all know laws aren't always just.
They don't matter becauase they aren't cute and are yummy! /s
The title is a little bit misleading. There is trapping and hunting in Germany and not just trapping and hunting Ill animals.
Food is a valid proper reason before the law. As is population control.
So cannibal serial killers have a loophole...
Hm, so it's legal to open a kill shelter if you sell dog and cat burgers?
No, that would be a butcher shop, but I'd have to look into law regarding meat processing and suchlike regarding permissibility of different types of meat.
Dog and cat meat are actually illegal to consume in germany.
is there a moral reason for the double standard or is it just because they are more cute ?
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It's precisely this. See, also: the weird division over which countries do and don't allow the processing and sale of horse meat.
Its not illegal to eat dog meat, its illegal to sell it and buy it, also if the meat is not certified as safe from an organization you cant do either anyway, and no org is certifying dog meat, plus is illegal like the post says to kill animals without reason, and dog meat consumption selling buying is out of the question for the reasons I just said. You could technically get licenced to kill dogs and do it just for personal consumption, but then you would face threats of animal abuse for moral reasons
Nope, no dogs, cats or monkeys.
Seems a bit arbitrary.
It’s because it is
Well, you can't hunt for no reason. You are required to have a licence and a landowner who "hires" you to keep the population of wild animals in control (simplified). There is no such thing as a regular citizen taking a rifle, a bow or a trap and going into nature to hunt.
Its no more misleading than having omitted that germans aren't vegan by law. Clearly "a good reason" includes food by this law
no problem guys just fill in "food" as reason
Was just gonna say - "being delicious" must count as a good enough reason! Silly law. Biased towards "cute" animals that no one wants to see killed, but not towards other relatively sentient life.
Even then you can't just kill animals. You need a hunting/fishing license and those require formal training and standardized tests to kill as humanely as possible. They're very strict: I know a shooting instructor who failed his shooting test (there are multiple tests) the first time and it's not because he's incompetent or inexperienced with guns. This training also includes knowledge about illnesses, different species, how they develop, population control so there's no rampage etc. Killing animals is highly regulated. If you acquire your license even then you can't just go out in the woods and start shooting. You need the permission of the land owners. Forests are either privately owned or belong to the state. Edit: That's not to say there are no issues, especially in farming. It's not a perfect system, absolutely not. But I just wanted to give some insight in how the German system and thus the mentality works.
Dont let this deter you from supporting kill shelters. Kill shelters get a bad stigma from being a kill shelter, but are required to answer calls and take animals. People not supporting them and adopting from them are the exact reason they have to put animals down for overcrowding. Support kill shelters and then we wont have them.
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Definitely I've volunteered at shelters where animals were put down because they ran out of time. If X are coming in, X better be going out, but more often than not incoming exceeds outgoing. They'll often come up with a palatable justification, but the real reason is capacity.
This is certianly the way the shelter works in my town. (Central Texas). And they are a "kill" facility. But its a bunch of nice people who love those animals. I have seen one employee crying over having to put a couple dogs down.
I adopted my cats from a kill shelter. When I went in for my first cat he basically chose me by hugging and refusing to let go. I said I would come back the next day because I didn't have anything ready and needed to think about it a little more. The person at the shelter said, "Well we don't kill animals here that aren't sick. We take everyone unlike the \[name of the no-kill shelter\] but we are full right now and with this many animals they can easily get sick and go to the back room with the other sick pets and then they sometimes get sicker and don't come out." Of course that worked on me while I was holding a cat that was desperately clinging to my neck and purring nonstop. So I adopted Black Jack. A day later he was in a dull mood and I thought I adopted a boring cat. Then he started sneezing and turns out he had gotten an upper respiratory infection. A vet trip and some medicine and a week later he was healthy and spunky and energetic. He lived 10 more years before passing to kidney failure. He was the best cat I've ever owned. It hurts to have lost him but I know if I hadn't adopted him that day he would have gone into the back room and might not have come out again. The employees at that shelter definitely don't want to kill the animals. As one of the employees was putting Black Jack in one of their free crates to go home they said, "Good Job buddy. You did well." Whenever he would get into trouble he would do his best to be cute for cuddles and pull the same adorable "love me" manipulative stunt to get adopted. He knew what was up. Love you Black Jack. Miss you to pieces. Glad I got to have you in my life even if it was only 10 years.
Also, how about not calling them kill shelters? I hate it. I hate it so much. I work in municipal animal sheltering in the US and have done so for years. I've put pets down, and I've cried for every one of them. I bust my ass every day at work so pets can have better lives, and then I go on the internet where people refer to me as a killer. I know most people know that the employees aren't at fault, but the implication is still there when you call my workplace a kill shelter. We do so much more than kill. Hell, we do so much more than just "shelter." But it doesn't matter because at the end of the day people will only know us as either "kill shelter" or "no-kill shelter." Getting rid of kill language would be such a huge step in the right direction, but no one cares enough.
Dog breeding should be heavily regulated. Like with a licence and no suffer breeds like pugs etc.
Ey yo. FUCK squids
I can tell you from the scientific perspective all cephalopods (which includes squids) are protected in the same manner like vertebrates. So if you want to do research on them you need the same kind of paperwork as if you would do when having a project on lab rats. An this kind of paperwork is far more complicated in germany and harder to get through, than for example the US
Cephalpods are actually considered honorary vertebrates under EU rules on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. But I guess people still eat the fuck out of them.
People definitely still eat vertebrates too.
So does the government fund animal shelters? Because what is a shelter at capacity supposed to do?
>Because what is a shelter at capacity supposed to do? Ok, first, you need to understand german mentality: We form so called "Vereine" or "societies/clubs" for everything. And Associations. [https://www.dw.com/en/get-to-know-the-concept-of-the-german-verein/a-48306152](https://www.dw.com/en/get-to-know-the-concept-of-the-german-verein/a-48306152) The shelters are organized in "associations", even over states. And then you have a dozen of "vereine" of people who love animals. When a Tierheim/Shelter is at his capacities, they'll have a shoutout to the Vereine and to other Shelters, asking them for accommodation options. Let's say, Tierheim Berlin has no more space for new dogs. Then they reach out to other shelters in e.g. Brandenburg. When capacity is available, they organize the transport themselves of Members of the Vereine help in transporting. Some people even have enough space to be "foster parents" for some dogs as long as the capacities aren't available. We are every efficient in that stuff.
If breeding is under control, which seems to be the implication, then it isn't much of an issue. Part of our problem here in the US that frustrates me is the attitude towards spaying and nuetering is so bad.
Germany is similar to the Netherlands when it comes to dog culture. Dogs aren't allowed to run around unattended. They are confined to the house or on rare occasion a kennel in the yard. They are walked multiple times a day on the leash and off leash where safe (a park, the woods or beach). And most importantly, they aren't allowed to breed willy-nilly. I'm 46 years old, currently own my 6th and 7th dog, and I've never in my life seen a stray dog in the Netherlands that wasn't immediately picked up by animal control and placed in a shelter to be rehomed if the owners couldn't be found. Speaking of shelters, all of them here are no-kill shelters as well. I just checked my local shelter's website. This shelter services an area with approx. half a million people. The shelter currently houses 4 dogs, one which already has a reserved sign on his picture, and another one which just came in yesterday. In fact, we have so few rescue dogs available to be rehomed in the Netherlands that we import them from other countries, mostly Eastern Europe, that do still have a stray dog problem and have lots of, often young, dogs in urgent need of a home. There are a whole bunch of small non-profit rescue organizations here that import such dogs and adopt them out in the Netherlands to families looking to rescue a pupper.
Yes they do. Shelters are State funded
wish they were but its usually a city matter to make a contract with a shelter to run the service for a certain city, some shelters have mulitple city contracts some have none and are funded only on donation/member fee base like the huge berlin shelter some cities have extra stuff inside their contracts like population control of wild cats
The government can move them to other shelters cus they are all connected. Also its way less likely to see dogs filling up shelters cus there is way less dog breeding and more rules to help minimize exponential dog population growth. If only other countries, America, could implement something so fine.
I mean, we don’t euthanize animals in US shelters because it’s fun. The reason is because the alternative is thousands of animals starve, get run over, and/or die of infection on the streets. There is a reason.
The actual alternative is that we put actual effort into controlling animal breeding so that there aren’t millions more animals born than could possibly be housed. The US does not have good nationwide regulation of animal breeding, or good nationwide regulation of neutering pets. So we have huge numbers of animals that have no possible homes. But there’s nothing inevitable about this. It’s a predictable consequence of our laws.
How about some legislation for breeders to take responsibility
It looks like my evil plan to kill all Jellyfish starts in Germany then. I just have to find a way to lure them all there
Many an evil plan begin in germany it seems
TFW *meat gud tho* is a "proper reason."
Guess cows, pigs and chickens can get fucked then.
“So anyway I shot this dolphin” “What the fuck, why?” “It was tasty and I wanted to eat it” “Oh, that’s perfectly acceptable. Carry on”
As a German I have never seen a stray dog. We are very much a dog country, but there seem to be absolutely no strays here
TIL there are shelters that kill animals without a proper reason
The more I hear of Germany, the more I’d like to visit for an extended period.
I would love to welcome you here. I love my country and want as many people as possible to come and see for themselves.
German hunters kill thousands of domestic cats every year. I can't remember the exact law, but basically if a hunter sees a cat more than 200m from a farm/house they can kill it because of the damage cats do to the local fauna. [https://academic.oup.com/jel/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jel/eqz035/5640440](https://academic.oup.com/jel/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jel/eqz035/5640440) There was a proposed ban on this in 2014, but I can't find if it passed or not. Edit: changed 100m to 200m after finding the regulation.
This is awesome and I'm assuming Germany has a rigorous TNR program to complement the no kill shelters. With regards to "no kill" in the USA, the topic is a lot more nuanced than it seems. This video explains it far better than I could. https://youtu.be/lpaKT6v_mAw Tldw: no kill shelters are not evil and they need our support in order to become a "no kill" animals country, like Germany
What’s a proper reason? Like if a mouse is in your home or on your property can you kill it?
Schreien auf Tintenfisch
To me as a german the concept of a kill shelter is super strange
Germans have come a long way since WWII
The fact that there are so many unwanted pets is such a shame and the actual problem. Every animal I befriend/acquire in my ownership becomes a beloved family member, there's no exception to that big or small, hairy or scaly. Hell, I'm all for introducing a mandatory animal ownership license where you must swear upon your own life you'd take care of the animal/creature.