Stray dogs

Two interesting threads here/ Just a comment on the misuse of parking spaces for people with a blue badge, which could be a thread on its own. Of course the spaces are at the scenic point of beauty spots. If I reach the point where mobility is severely restricted, I would love to be able to sit and look over the reservoirs around which I've walked my dogs/children/grandchildren so happily for so many years. I couldn't do this if the disability slots were on the main car park. It's selfish to use a disability space when you don't need it.
The discussion on bringing dogs into the UK from other places in Europe is interesting, if I can put aside my irritation on the publicity seeking manner in which the DM columnist behaved.
I've recently indulged myself with a puppy, but have had rescued dogs for many many years, and also fostered dogs waiting for adoption (until the pup arrived....) I feel that the cost and effort involved in bringing stray dogs to be re-homed in the UK would be better spent on public awareness/funding the cost of neutering strays in their home countries. I love Greece and over the past 30 plus years have been pleased to see huge improvements in animal welfare. A lot of this I'm sure is down to the efforts of northern european visitors/ex pats, who have raised awareness, and money, to fund programmes where dogs/cats are neutered. There are so many dogs in need of re-homing here, and yes, a lot of them are the result of people who buy a puppy with no real understanding of the fact that there will be years of commitment/training/care needed if you are to have a happy, healthy dog.

My main problem is my left ankle. I drive an automatic. It's just over 2years old and yet to reach 3000 miles. There is no point in driving if you can't do anything when you get there!

The side you are supposed to display is the one without the photo on it so they could easily be passed around but getting caught would mean the disabled person would lose the badge. I often get funny looks if I return to the car on my own because DH has given up on the long walk back to the car park and is sitting on a bench nearer to the main road waiting for me to pick him up.

Liz Jones wonders if people should be driving if they are 'so disabled.' She obviously has no problem with her hips or knees. My knees are arthritic and I often limp quite badly even though I am not classed as disabled. Driving is not weight bearing so in an automatic I can drive for hours without discomfort. It's getting out the other end I don't look forward to.

What's the betting that when LJ starts to experience the aches and pains of old age we'll ALL hear about it.

I have a blue badge thank goodness.
You have to display them with the photo side down. The disabled person also has to leave the car. I often see gran (or similar) parked with their badge in a disabled bay while perfectly fit daughter goes round waitrose.
I never lend my badge. It is illegal to do so!

I wouldn't take it personally greatnan, we are 3 pages on from your OP

Yes, I know there are photos on the badges but unless a warden hangs around waiting for the person who has parked to return to the car, how would they know whether it was them or not?

My sister has a disabled parking badge, even though she doesn't drive, because she can walk only a short distance and sometimes gets lifts from friends (or me, when I visit her). Her photo is on it, so I don't know how it could be used by anybody else.

Liz Jones doesn't upset me and I didn't pretend it was a huge international story. I like to read her column because it is amusing to see what desperate lengths she will go to in order to attract attention.
I thought it was quite interesting - anybody who didn't could just not read it!
Crikey, is there any subject I can raise without having it parsed and analysed.

Musing on disabled parking. When my father was alive we used to take him to the local large Tesco. He could hardly walk and had a disabled badge. Often, all the spaces were taken, more than half by non disabled people.

On the other hand, I know quite a few disabled people lend their badges out to able body relatives now and then.

Such is human nature!

I suppose I am being hideously unpolically correct.

But I am being honest at least.

I've had similar thoughts about disabled parking bays.

There is a local beauty spot near me with lovely views. All the parking spaces with the best views, about seven of them, are for disabled drivers. The car park is always crowded, often spaces are not available. I don't think I've ever seen more than one car parked in the disabled spaces, the rest stay empty.

Yes, I get annoyed with the situation.

I do have problems walking very far sometimes but do not have a disabled badge.

Oh, and yes, I get fed up when I go to local swimming pool, again often no spaces, to see a row of empty spaces I cannot park in because they are for parents with pushchairs. I parked in one of them once.

Ok Elegran indefensible misuse of disabled parking bays I will admit.

As in www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2305113/Liz-Jones-Disabled-parking-bays-perfect--Land-Rover.html

Was she tongue-in-cheek about liking to park her Land Rover in disabled bays, I wonder? She seems to think that as she has not met seven paraplegics in a cimema, there is no need for seven disabled parking bays outside, and she confuses disabled slots with parent-and-child bays.

Suspect she needs to break a leg and be in a plaster cast so that she can see how difficult life is without a pass to a disabled bay - or with the bays all filled with agile journalists leaping gazelle-like from their SUVs.

I really don't quite understand people getting so upset about Liz Jones; if you don't like the woman, don't read what she writes then all will be peace and harmony. I do enjoy reading what she writes, it often makes a lot of sense and often is tongue in cheek and very funny.

One thing that isn't in dispute is her commitment to animal welfare - she's rescued numerous animals, not just dogs and spent a fortune caring for them. I don't see any evidence that she dislikes children; by her own account, she was anorexic in her youth which rendered her infertile. Possibly her animals are child substitutes, who would condemn her for that?

I don't think it was meant to be 'breaking news', more a story'.

I read the article and the dogs over whereveritwas are very badly treated. Some were kept in complete darkness for two years for instance, the vet picked up one little dog by it's back leg, and so on.

The charity LJ was attached to also campaigns for the welfare of dogs in countries where they eat dog meat.

Maybe there's the same principle behind it as giving to charities for people abroad, say Africa, rather than to say the NSPCC.

You're probably right, petallus but going back to Greatnan's OP, why doesn't the DM get Liz Jones to campaign for re-homing dogs in this country? Too easy? Not enought drama?

But in the overall scheme of things, it's hardly international news is it?

nanaej how do you know that is what happened? LJ went along with people from an animal charity. We know LJ is an animal lover so an alternative explanation could just as well be that she approached her editor to fund the dog rescuing expedition because she was concerned about the dogs and, yes, they may very well have agreed because it was going to sell copies but that's the real world isn't it?

I thought the same, anno and I agree with nanaej, Liz Jones' somewhat naive attitude to being an animal lover sells copies.

I'm not sure a straightforward, fact finding report would provoke much discussion though.

Poor little beggars.

Interesting item on Fake Britain tonight about puppies being brought in from Eastern Europe with fake documentation. One was so tiny it should still have been with its mother and couldn't possibly be the age the passport said it was. Several had to be quarantined until the vets could be sure they were free of rabies. A dachshund that was supposed to have come from Northern Ireland was found to be from Lithuania. It's good to know that these were detected but how many may be slipping through the net?

Petallus It is manufactured in the sense that a newspaper paid for a specific, contraversial columnist to go and rescue the dogs. I do not think for one minute the DM editor cares particularly about dogs but knew the story would sell copy!

If they had sent a staff journalist to investigate and write about the very real problem of far too many stray and maltreated animals across the world that would not have been manufactured and been a straightforward fact finding report.

On the expat forums in France and Spain, this issue comes up times and times again. Neutering is accepted in Northern France, but not the South. I've argued the case with many of the refuges (all private, nothing like the RSPCA there) and they just say a/ they can't afford it b/ they can't re-home if they are 'done'. Which is madness of course, and the majority of cats and dogs re-homed go on to produce litter after litter of too often homeless cats and dogs

Dear me, granjura. Perhaps they could devise some kind of chemical castration that won't show! Some kind of canine or feline vasectomy?

Tegan!