(LS) — Overcrowding is one of the greatest threats to the future of mankind. The world’s population is expected to hit 9 billion in the next 20 years, and everyone needs to start thinking about ways they can help provide for the good of the planet. Pet owners are most definitely not excluded from that equation. According to the American Humane Society, more than 77.5 million dogs are owned by Americans, with 39 percent of all American households owning at least one dog and an average of 1.7 dogs for each household. There are even more cats with 93.6 million cats owned, and a lot of cat ladies with 2.3 cats owned per household. That doesn’t even take into account the millions of stray dogs and feral cats running free believed to be as many as 100 million cats and 50 million dogs. Clearly, pet owners must do their part to lessen the carbon footprint of all of these animals. Here’s a list of things you can do to lessen the impact of your hairy best friend:
- Rescue an animal from a shelter. Every year millions of unwanted dogs and cats are put to sleep, and do you know what happens to the bodies? I volunteered at the Rowlett Animal Shelter last summer, and they put them in the dumpster. That’s a tremendous amount of loving animals turned into trash. Only 19 percent of all owned dogs and 22 percent of all owned cats were adopted by their owners. At the other end of the spectrum, puppy mills that provide pure bred animals are often operated inhumanely and are extremely taxing on the environment.
- Spay or neuter your pets. Bob Barker knew what he was talking about. Every day, 70,000 puppies and kittens are born in America, and that’s because only 75 percent of all owned dogs and 87 percent of all owned cats are spayed or neutered. Throw in millions of fertile strays, and the propensity for even a purebred dog to end up with a litter of whatsits is very high.
- Don’t let your animal roam wild. I’m not just talking about keeping your dog on a leash, so it doesn’t kill rabbits, squirrels or other critters and dig up the ground. In fact, cats can be even more harmful on indigenous wild life. While nobody knows for sure, the American Bird Conservancy estimates that 1 billion wild birds are slaughtered by domestic and feral cats every year in the United States. The effect is tremendous. Fewer birds mean more insects, and that’s bad for crops and humans. When you couple those statistics with the fact that dogs and cats that are allowed to wander have shorter life spans than those that are kept inside, you can see why most veterinarians suggest keeping cats inside and dogs enclosed in a yard.
- Use biodegradable bags to pick up poop. Don’t just use plastic bags from the grocery store to pick up your pooch’s poop. Use a biodegradable bag, and your dog’s scat will not end up as a time capsule. Meanwhile, cat owners should use environmentally safe kitty litter and not a product with artificial clumping agents that can harm the cat’s health.
- Better yet, compost all of that poop. Why contribute to the problem of too much garbage when you can be part of the solution. Only don’t use the composted poop on anything you’re going to eat because you could end up with a painful disease in your intestinal track. Composted dung still makes excellent fertilizer for flowers and other non-edible plants.
- Don’t indulge your pets with destructible toys. I used to have a lab mix named Sully who loved to tear her toys to shreds. I thought it was funny, and I’d get her toys all of the time just to watch her destroy them. This wasn’t funny. This was Sully and I adding to the world’s trash problem. Get your dogs and cats strong toys that last. Or, build them toys out of recycled trash.
- Bug off! Make sure your animal takes a product to ward off ticks, mosquitoes and fleas. Ticks carry deadly Lyme disease, mosquitoes can be carriers of heartworm, and fleas are just downright annoying.
Dogs and cats can be trusting companions and great additions to any family, but the time has come to raise your animal responsibly.
