and now for something completely different

oh geez, this is no fun to bring up but . . .

We have been quiet about this mostly because we like to keep our website happy and upbeat and hopeful. In the last two weeks, more cockers have entered the thirty plus shelters that we try to keep an eye on (all within a hundred mile radius of Los Angeles). Our volunteer, Jill, has the hardest task of anyone. She watches the shelter websites daily and keeps a blog to help get the dogs a little bit of notice: CockersInLAShelters.blogspot.com. Her blog is always linked from our website and we generally don't like to bum people out with this. But our shelters are in a real crisis right now, more so than we've ever seen in all of the years of doing animal rescue. It is not just our breed of dog, it is all animals. Owners are walking into the shelters at a record pace and handing in their pets. If you stand in the lobby of any animal shelter in a low income neighborhood, you can time it and bet that about every ten to fifteen minutes a dog or cat or litter of kittens or litter of puppies, is being brought in to the shelter. Quite often it is families bringing their children with for the experience of leaving their dog there. I've heard parents tell their children that the shelter will "find the dog a good home". This just isn't true but we have to remain silent and not say anything, while children who will most likley become future dog owners are being taught the lesson that a dog is disposable and you bring it to the shelter when it is no longer convenient to have one.

Why so many cocker spaniels? Well, the problem stems from the backyard breeders. You can buy a five week old cocker puppy for $240 cash, from a street vendor in downtown Los Angeles or in the "hood" where the consumers being targeted are low income people or non working people. Many of them are immigrants whom are often already struggling to take care of themselves and their children. But buying a cute puppy for the kids is a fun thing to do, an impulse buy. What happens is that as the cocker puppy grows up, these low income families cannot afford to pay for grooming, or to pay for quality pet food (so the cockers are getting chronic ear infections, skin problems). They are not able to pay for any vet care whatsoever (that is why we see so many cockers in the shelters with cherry eye, a simple procedure that can be fixed for $325). These families bring their matted, dirty, medical needs cockers to the shelter at the age of one, two, three. In their minds, it is cheaper to just buy a new cocker puppy from the street corner, than to put any money into their existing cocker.

We will never ever understand this and yet the backyard breeders continue to profit off of badly bred puppies. We are rescuing the mommy dogs once they've been used up (an example of that is our current cocker, Bunny, who is about to get her third hernia surgery because her abdomen muscles were so worn out from the years of being bred). We are rescuing the puppies as soon as they have medical issues and are dropped off at the shelter (example is our Brady and Eli, who had cherry eye and now have seizures that we are managing with medication). And then of course, Sweet Pea, whom many people remember as the emaciated cocker that his owner dragged into the shelter. He was so weak and yet she didn't even bother to pick him up and carry him in. These are his before and after pictures. We spent quite a bit of money on him to get a proper diagnosis and it was discovered he has Lymphangiectasia and he is now being managed with medicine and home cooked high protein meals, three times a day. His former owner had contacted us a couple of weeks before Christmas, because she saw on our website that Sweet Pea "got well" and she wanted to give him as a Christmas gift to her child. We asked her why she never took him to the vet when she saw him dropping all of his weight and she said she didn't have the money. We told her she should not get another pet until she is in a position to be able to afford vet care. We never heard from her again and we wonder if she went to buy another cocker puppy from the streets, and we also wonder if one day we might be rescuing that dog from a shelter, just like we did with Sweet Pea? We don't normally focus on this - the reality of what doing animal rescue in Los Angeles is like on a daily basis. But the numbers of cockers in our shelters are so high right now, that we are taking this to all of you. Can you please forward the message to people you know whom might consider adopting a dog from a shelter? It doesn't even have to be a cocker spaniel, just any dog, they are all equally deserving. Just one dog? You can find a complete listing of dogs in our shelters by going to PetHarbor.com, enter your zip code for shelters near you or enter Los Angeles as the city to see what we are facing. You can search by specific breeds or you can search by size or gender. Even if you don't save a cocker spaniel, you will be saving one dog and that will be changing a life for that one dog.

Can you also please tell anyone you know whom is contemplating purchasing a puppy from a backyard breeder or off of the internet? The puppy mills all have fancy high end looking puppy websites, never buy a puppy off the internet, not ever! A legitimate ethical breeder generally has a waiting list to get a puppy, they will allow you to meet both parents of the puppies and make available to you health records that the parents were both thoroughly examined and tested before being bred. With cockers in particular, it is important that you ask the breeder to show proof and a doctor's report that both parents were given a thorough eye exam by an opthamologist. Cockers are prone to eye problems and only an ethical breeder is going to have the parents screened before breeding them. Any breeder who bars you from meeting the parents and won't supply medical screening records of the parents, run, don't walk and don't give that breeder your money. Our rescue partner, Lisa Atterby, from Angels Under Our Wings Cocker Rescue in Victoria, B.C., made this touching video below. It says it all.

You may have read how Camp Cocker has been struggling with taking in so many medical needs dogs and we are hoping to get people to donate a small amount on a monthly basis? You can either make a one time donation below or you can sign up to make a monthly donation for as little as $3 a month. That's not so much, is it? If one hundred people each donated $3 a month, that would cover the boarding for one dog. All of us together, we can do this!

three badly bred pups . . . poor babies, its not their fault!

Watch the journey of three cocker puppies, from backyard breeder to the shelter to Camp Cocker rescue. Please spread the message to tell everyone you know, to take pause before purchasing puppies from backyard breeders. You can identify a good breeder by the waiting list to buy a puppy. You can identify a good breeder by going in person, meeting the parents of the puppies, observing how the puppies are being socialized in the first weeks of their life. You can identify a good breeder by asking for medical records for both parents, that they have had their eyes checked out by an eye doctor, hips/joints checked out, and they are healthy. You can identify a good breeder by how transparent they are in showing they have bred the parents across lines (and not in line breeding). If a breeder can not pass all of these criteria, then you are supporting bad breeding. Watch the story of Brady, Eli and Kramer to see what happens when breeders do not care about breeding for health and only care about breeding to sell puppies for quick cash. Somewhere out there, is the mommy dog of Brady, Eli and Kramer, being bred again. And somewhere out there, are consumers willing to give money to the breeder who is doing this. If all consumers everywhere, took a stand and said "no more" I am not giving my money to support this industry . . . do you know what would happen? The puppy mills would all close down, pet stores would stop selling puppies, backyard breeders would have to find a legitimate way to make money. And guess what? We would see a trickle down effect of less cockers in the shelters. It all starts with you, and your one voice . . . speak up to everyone you know who is considering buying a puppy. Remember, if a puppy is for sale and you can buy it quickly, that is not a legitimate breeder. Good quality breeders have long waiting lists.