The other day I met a woman who told me she’s been “rescuing” animals all her life. She invited me to come by and meet her dogs. I did drop by and met her 3 “rescue” dogs.
We are having tea when she tells me she had 17 puppies last summer. “From where?” I choked. “Oh from these guys” she says, waving her hand at her 1 male, 2 female standard poodles. “But I’m not going to do that anymore, it’s getting to be too much work.”
Then she tells me how she used to breed Welsh ponies, til she hurt her back last year, so she gave the ponies, and the last of the puppies to her daughter in Kelowna, who “found good homes for all of them.” 
THEN, she shows me her African finches, who are on loan to her, and she’s breeding them, as well as some canaries in the other room and that she and her friend both breed parrots and that her friend had “donated” her extra birds to the Parrot Refuge in Coombs, B.C. “She donated the ones she couldn’t sell – my friend and I both believe in the importance of supporting rescue.”
Breeding birds and “donating” them to the Parrot Refuge isn’t rescue, it’s insanity. It’s offensive breeding of birds who should be flying freely, profiting from this trade in sentient beings, and dumping what you can’t use in the lap of someone else and counting on them to take care of your mess for the rest of time. And then boasting about it.
What is it that some people are not understanding? Is it the mentality that you are the only one who understands the breed, or the species, so that it is up to you to propagate it? It’s most certainly about money but why boast of being a “rescuer” when you are, in fact, a breeder? Perhaps it’s a way of deluding yourself so that you get both the cash from breeding, and that lovely feeling of being a do-gooder by dumping your birds/animals into a rescue facility rather than the garbage can.
She asked me if I could help out with some pet sitting, but I’m busy. Maybe her friend, the cockatoo breeder, can help her out…
- Lyn MacDonald, Coombs, BC