Quote:
Originally Posted by onthefly  I don't buy that article at all. It's just someones racy attempt to get some publicity. Nothing sells like black discrimination. As far as I'm concerned it's pure nonsence. |
Hi onthefly,
It'd be nice if it were just an attempt to get publicity but the black dog syndrome is well documented in shelters and animal control facilities. Rescues are sort of a different scenario--they tend to be dedicated to one breed and if the breed is predominantly black (like Dobes) it's what potential adoptors expect to see and find and color doesn't make any difference.
In Portland, Oregon it's such a problem in the Oregon Humane Society shelter which is located in Portland that a couple of times a year they have "Black Dog Day (or weekend usually) and give a discount on black dogs. The majority of the black dogs seem to be Lab crosses of one variety or other.
Black cats also tend to go begging except right around Halloween where every nut case in the county shows up trying to adopt black cats and kittens--because abuse is so common with cats adopted this way most of the facilities around Portland call a moratorium on black cat/kitten adoptions for two or three weeks immediately before Halloween.
Sad but true--I don't pretend to know the reason for the large number of black dogs (and cats) that languish in various facilities but it seems to be true everywhere--a friend used to work at shelters when she was going through vet school--a couple of the shelters were major league kill shelters (Los Angeles, California) and when the dogs hit either 10 or 14 days in the shelter (except for those being held for court trials or rabies quarantine) they were euthanized--she said that the majority were black.