Please, No Puppies Under The Christmas Tree!
This article was first printed in the Hartford Courant on December 4, 2004
Donna Sicuranza
My boyfriend is threatening to get me a puppy for Christmas. Don't get me wrong. I like puppies, but adding an energetic bundle of fur and needle teeth to the menagerie I have at home - two house cats, two barn cats, two horses, a dog and a pony - is nuts.
"Are you insane?" I asked him the other night when he brought it up - again.
"No. I think the dog needs a puppy to play with."
"The dog?" I asked. "Is she going to train it? Or will you? Because I'm on animal overload."
The truth is: He isn't the only one with this crazy idea.
I'm employed by an organization that runs a mobile spaying clinic and other programs to help animals. Last week we got a call from another well-intentioned would-be pet owner.
"Do you have any puppies?" the young man asked.
"No. We're not an animal shelter," I said.
"Yeah, I know," he said, "but I called the pound and got a recording. I left a message, but nobody got back to me. I want to get my girlfriend a puppy for Christmas."
I wasn't surprised he hadn't heard from the shelter. Most won't let people adopt pets during the holidays - to reduce the number of returns afterward - but I could hear the determination in his voice.
"Does your girlfriend want a dog?" I asked, trying to make him think first.
There was silence for a moment and then the declaration: "If she doesn't, I do. And I want it for Christmas. Thanks, anyway." He hung up.
I could only hope he would want it after Christmas, too. But there's no guarantee.
In my old neighborhood, one family got a puppy for Christmas every few years or so. It was invariably a short-coated black-and-tan type with floppy ears and a skinny, pot-bellied body: a happy little mongrel that the father picked up on his way home from third shift. He'd sneak it into the basement while the kids were sleeping, tie a big red bow around its neck and bring it upstairs first thing in the morning.
Later that day, the kids would cart their wriggly new pup door-to-door for the rest of us kids to see. "This is Tippy," one of them would say with excitement. That is what they always called their dogs.
During the holiday vacation from school, we spent our days on toboggans and ice skates. We made snow angels, built Eskimo forts and played long and hard, impervious to the cold. Through all of this, the little Tippies tagged along, eager to please, delighted to be part of the pack.
By the time the break was over, however, so was the novelty of a puppy. From then on, each Tippy would be chained to a ramshackle dog house in the family's backyard, where the dog would remain, in confused isolation, for six months or so, until he finally "ran away" or "went to live on a farm."
As a child, I didn't question this fate because a kitten my Uncle Richie gave me also "ran off to a farm," along with the two rabbits he gave my sister, and I believed this story. Now I know what really happened.
Oh, sure. Some pets do stray and become lost. Some even find their way to my farm - like the young German shepherd who wandered into our barn one bitterly cold day. She was half-starved and scared. There was no collar, no sign posted for her return. We called around, but nobody answered. We named her Tracy, and she lived with us for 12 years.
But the majority of abandoned pets don't last long on their own. Those that are surrendered to shelters are sentenced to life in a cage to await an adoption that may never happen, or they are killed by euthanasia.
I believe my boyfriend knows better than to get me a puppy; it's just his way of teasing me about a lifestyle that's shaped by the needs of animals. However, there will be plenty of recipients of cats and dogs this year, including the friends of a woman who canceled a spay appointment with our mobile clinic a month ago.
"My cat's pregnant," she said. "I might as well let her have the kittens and then give them away as Christmas gifts."
Would she take them back if they didn't fit her friends' lifestyles? I hope so.
The shelters are full of living, breathing gifts that nobody wanted. The others ran off to that farm.
Donna Sicuranza is executive director of Tait's Every Animal Matters (TEAM) in Westbrook.
Since 1997, the TEAM Mobile Feline Unit has been bringing affordable spay/neuter and vaccination services to communities statewide so that more cats can be sterilized before they reproduce.
The fee of $57 includes a brief exam, spay/neuter, vaccinations (rabies, distemper, upper/lower respiratory infection), nail trim and ear mite treatment (if necessary). Medication to control parasites such as worms, fleas, and ticks is also available. More Info at: