They try to solve this problem by encouraging or requiring people to spay or neuter their pets (to reduce the number of cats and
dogs who need homes), 57 encouraging people to adopt animals
from shelters rather than purchasing them
from pet stores or
breeders (to increase the number of people looking to provide homes to animals in shelters), 58 and
donating money to shelters and foster programs that care for cats and
dogs waiting to be adopted (so they can house animals for longer).59 Collectively, these solutions have greatly reduced the number of cats and
dogs euthanized in shelters.60 The problem is well understood, although making further progress in solving it may be expensive in areas where all these solutions have already been implemented.
We are grateful for the support given to our research by
breeders and owners of Old English Sheepdogs who
donated DNA
from their
dogs, and by our collaborators, Drs. Dahlia Nielsen and Alison Mottsinger Reif of the Bioinformatics Research Center, North Carolina State University, Dr. Jerold Bell of the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Andrew Singleton of the Neurogenetics Laboratory at NIH, Drs. Kerstin Lindblad - Toh and Noriko Tonomura of the Broad Institute and Drs Dennis O'Brien and Gary Johnson of the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine.