A few years back a friend of mine who was Caucasian said you are the only person of color that I know that has animals. I will say I have dogs I do not have anything else. I thought about it and at first off that was a little strange. Then I went back through my childhood an adulthood and thought about all the people of color I knew who did not like dogs. In fact growing up in the 80s and 90s, the people of color that I knew were the ones that were strongly against the fact that we had our dog a beagle German Shepherd mix living in the house full-time. I remember when a lot of people came over we had to put the dog away. They would get really upset about the dog being anywhere near them. I don’t have friends like that now that I’m an adult. Although I don’t have a lot of people coming over in the house, especially in these days and times. My family and we are all people of color always had dogs. Although I remember my Family did have objections to my childhood dog living in the house. A lot of my family members did leave their dogs out on chains, my mother always taught me that was wrong. My family talked about my dog being in the house all the time, but I’m happy to say from what I know of my family members nobody has a dog living out on a chain now. Thankfully I always attributed that to a generational thing. My grandmother, and older family members were of the generation where that was done, my cousins and people closer to my age have their dogs in the house. There. I just attributed it possibly to where I live in the south maybe there’s just not as many people of color in my specific small town. In fact I got really concerned and wanted to know other people of color who had dogs and love them so I joined a social media group for women of color who had animals. I could not find a specific group on social media for women of color who had dogs unfortunately. Which is kind of sad or maybe just shows the lack of the share number of women of color who have dogs. I was happy recently to find blog and podcast specifically from women of color who had dogs. When I was looking up women of color and dogs on social media all I could find was pitbull clubs and groups. Which I thought was really stereotypical. Then I started to think other than me everyone in my family who has a dog actually does have a pitbull but I live in the south where Pitbulls and Chihuahuas are prevalent. The other thing is the one person in my family who did not have a pitbull other than me actually had a Chihuahua. I will say one of my relatives dogs developed some issues from not being spayed at all advanced age and I do not think my family is super great at spaying and neutering their dogs. Not sure if that is a economic issue which I kind of think it might not be I think it’s just more of something in my area in the south where I live. Well say I have found many people in my area in the south who are not people of color who are resistant to spaying and neutering their animals. People still have in their heads that you can make money from selling puppies which infuriates me. These people a lot of times do not even have purebred dogs and are definitely not breeding for the betterment of the breed. A relative recently talked about years ago how they bread pit bulls. This was a long time ago before I actually had the education that I have now. I started to go back and say did you test did you do this did you do that and then I stopped myself and thought well they’re not breeding now and that was a long time ago and it’s silly to go over everything and to try to figure out what kind of breeder they were. The good thing is they’re not breeding now. The overpopulation problem is more prevalent in the south and the lack of education when it comes to dogs as prevalent in the south. Many times recently I have found that dog shelters allow people to foster dogs and leave them outside 100% of the time. I could not believe it when I put in an application to foster through a shelter and they asked me did I prefer dogs living inside or out I was like why on earth would you let somebody foster a dog that’s going to keep them outside. I have a feeling that they would’ve even been OK with them living outside on a chain. Which is very sad. Recently I saw a post from a shelter looking for some dogs to be in a home because of course the shelter was overcrowded and I do not even think they had room for the specific dogs. They were smaller dogs like dachshund Chihuahuamixes and they said these are outside dogs so they need
People argue with me when I say things are just different in the south. I’m not saying all southern people are bad pet owners because they’re not. I’m just saying the rules, expectations, education level lots of things are different in the south I’m not so sure that it has to do with ethnic background or race, it could, but I think it’s more where you live and what’s allowed what’s expected and what’s known.always been a highly motivated person I’ve never been resistant to change and I love to educate myself and learn so of course I’m going to try to do the best that I can do when it comes to anything. Just for the few people of color that I know that have dogs I can’t say the third terrible dog owners but I can’t say that they’re the best. I can say that they function pretty well when it comes to the way things are done in the south. The same as what the pictures of. I just had a talk with that same person talking about how it’s not right for dog food to be all these multi colored morsels. That’s dye to make it look more attractive. I still see people feeding the dogs table scraps, and not using flea preventative. Quality of life for dogs.
Paws of Happiness 