Ahwatukee Foothills News readers wrote back with a vengeance after Emily Behrendt's misguided and misinformed commentary. The majority of letters in the print edition of last Wednesday's (May 14) AFN set the record straight on Behrendt's factual errors regarding pit bulls and rottweilers, animal mistreatment, and inbreeding in particular. One writer cited BadRap.org, which is not linked from AFN's website.
The 5/14 print edition of AFN also featured a full page ad in memory of Pumpkin from Deloris Delluomo, the woman who rescued Pumpkin three years ago. Deloris could have been bitter and lashed out at Maricopa County Animal Control or at the judge who ignored her pleas to find an alternative to killing Pumpkin. Instead she turned her anger and grief to fuel her longtime mission of working toward the benefit of homeless animals:
...What I have learned in all these years of fighting for animals is this: We can build bigger and better shelters, where larger numbers of pets can be housed and killed, we can educate children in schools, we can neuter and spay until we're blue in the face, and try to convince those who already have too many pets to adopt just one more.
But as long as pet owners fail to act responsibly by having their pets neutered and spayed, as long as consumers continue to encourage breeding by buying rather than adopting or rescuing, and as long as legislators fail to regulate responsibly by enacting breeding laws, no one wins....
...Today my resolve to fight for these abandoned and helpless animals is stronger than ever and I will continue to do so... in memory of Pumpkin.
I couldn't have said it better.
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