Dealing with Unwanted Pets in Japan

Written By: guyjin on October 7, 2009 2 Comments

I saw this post from Lee at Tokyo Times last night, and I just had to post a link to it here. The video below is from a Fuji News broadcast, so it is in Japanese with no subtitles, but it is very powerful nonetheless. It shows how unwanted pets, in this case stray dogs, are killed on a daily basis in Japan. Its certainly not for the faint of heart, and if you get a little weazy you may want to give it a miss. But at the same time this is a must see for anyone who considers getting a pet, to make sure that they will take care of it and not just discard it when they’ve had enough…

Again, this gets quite graphic from around the 5 min mark, so be advised before watching.

According to the clip, more than 310,000 cats and dogs are killed in this manner every year in Japan. Many of them within a day or so of being rounded up – there just aren’t enough people to take care of them. There are few well publicised avenues for obtaining ’rescue pets’ in Japan, and this is a shame. There needs to be a big campaign through all of the media to help save these animals, and to encourage people to take more responsibility for their pets. Of course, this kind of problem exists all around the world, and is not unique to Japan. But hopefully there can be more widespread awareness in the future of problems with unwanted animals, so that people will become more likely to look to adopt these poor animals…