Recently a friend of mine who’s a dog lover was telling me that he had heard on the news a story about how thousands and thousands of unwanted dogs and cats who are “put to sleep” each year in the US because there aren’t enough homes them all. When he bitched about there being just too many unnutered and unspayed pets I told him this tale.
In a lot of countries in Asia this is how they keep their dog population under control: Most dogs in Asia do not have owners. They are semi-wild animals who just hang around people living off of the scraps they can find. They are allowed to breed indiscriminately. When a female has a litter of puppies she is permitted to feed and care for them for 2 or 3 months until they’re weaned. When the puppies have reached the desired size and weight they are then butchered, cooked and eaten by whatever family they happen to be scrounging food off of. This way there are never too many dogs around and they even provide the people with a valuable source of protein.
In the west we think this is extremely cruel. However, instead utilizing this resource we simply kill off the unwanted dogs then let their corpses either burn up in an incinerator or rot in the ground. What a waste! In fact, we are so concerned about our dead dogs unused carcasses that we’ve even made it against the law to eat them. Even though there are millions of Asians now living in America who not only like the taste of the animal but whose cultural heritage it is to eat dog. How do you think Americans would feel if they moved to a country where the killing cows was wholly sanctioned but the eating beef was totally illegal?
When I finished he said, “Man, that is totally sick! You’ve never eaten dog meat, have you Tai?”
I opened my mouth but before I could answer he interrupted me saying, “No, don’t tell me. I don’t know if I could stay friends with anyone who’s eaten a dog.”
As he changed the subject I smiled thinking, ‘Hey, I’m a dog lover too. Especially garlic pepper puppy.’