With tobacco’s fortunes declining and indigo unnecessary, the ever-resourceful South has found a new export: dogs.
Southern animal rescues are over capacity, so they’re sending their excess dogs to New England, where demand exceeds supply. This leads to an uncomfortable, region-baiting question: Why do they have so many strays, and we don’t? A year ago, the founder of a Boston no-kill shelter said it’s because “animal rights are not favored in the South” and Southerners don’t spay and neuter their pets. This is like telling a friend she’s gotten fatter. It may be true, but must not be said. To keep the Union intact, wag more, snark less.
Comments
A little harsh.
Dogs are really almost the perfect companions for people. I own a dog that came up in a van full of dogs from Georgia almost three years ago. I prefer dogs (any kind, big/small, long hair short hair, pure bred or mutt) to most people these days.
A year ago, the founder of a Boston no-kill shelter said it's because "animal rights are not favored in the South" and Southerners don't spay and neuter their pets. By quoting part of this sentence and not the remainder, one is left to infer that the author's opinion is that "Southerners don't spay and neuter their pets." Hmmmm. As a relocated Bostonian who lived in the backwoods of Farmington, Maine, and and now lives in Raleigh, NC, I can assure you that the redneck, hick mentality you're painting "the South" with is spread quite ubiquitously through many parts of New England. But of course, to an eastern-establishment Massachusetts know-it-all liberal, painting all Southerners as rednecks and ignorants plays well in your environs. Being pro-active to spaying and neutering has as much to do with being a northern thing as racial redlining in housing markets to create an artificial divide between blacks and whites is southern thing...ooops, that was a Boston thing wasn't it?