25.09.2024
Melbourne – AFL club Western Bulldogs has received a letter from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) calling on its president to retire Caesar and Sunny, the team’s live bulldog mascots, because promoting breathing-impaired breeds (BIB) normalises the suffering of dogs with deformities and severe health problems – including brachycephalic syndrome, a leading cause of death for bulldogs – and encourages people to buy dogs with these extreme features.
“Extremely short snouts spell suffering,” says PETA Campaigns Advisor Mimi Bekhechi. “By showcasing Caesar and Sunny at games and events and promoting their breeder, the team is – however unwittingly – supporting the intentional breeding of dogs with painful and debilitating deformities.”
As well as asking that Caesar and Sunny’s mascot duties be relinquished to the willing humans behind the team’s four costumed mascots, Woofer, Roxie, Butch, and Barkly, PETA suggests that the team change its name to the “Western Mutts” and notes that buying designer animals from breeders kills shelter animals’ chances of being adopted. “You could even … dedicate some time during each game to showcase a dog from one of the country’s many overburdened animal shelters and help save lives!” writes PETA.
BIBs’ drastically shortened airways cause an array of painful and distressing symptoms – including laboured breathing, snorting, gagging, and collapsing – and make dogs more susceptible to vomiting, exercise intolerance, heatstroke, and an early death. So debilitating are these features that the Australian Veterinary Association has called for a ban on breeding or showing any dog with “a muzzle length less than a third of [their] skull length”.
PETA’s letter to the Western Bulldogs is available here.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.au and follow the group on Facebook and Instagram.
Contact:
PETA Australia press office Media@peta.org.au
#
The post Western Bulldogs Urged to Retire Bulldog Mascots and Change Name to ‘Western Mutts’ appeared first on PETA Australia.