Visit Mischief for some useful reminders and a lot of good links. It's a good season to take stock of what kind of example we are setting. Dickens wrote witheringly about a woman who was so obsessed with helping the inhabitants of an imaginary African country called Boorioboola-Gha that she totally neglected her own children.
Humanitarianism begins at home.
If our own dogs aren't properly cared for, we have no right to make pronouncements about the welfare of other people's pets. The number one issue in animal welfare in North America today is overpopulation. Close behind overpopulation is the issue of behavior. Given what we now know about the links between cruelty to animals and subsequent aggression now about the links between cruelty to animals and subsequent aggression against humans, ignoring one may also mean fostering the other. Think about it.