She is the latest addition to our family. Dogs and cats have always been part and parcel of of our world. We love them and they love and depend on us. We take care of their physical and hopefully their emotional needs and they love us unconditionally and make us think we are very special. We definitely get the better half of the relationship.
I recently read a quote that I forgot to whom it was credited but I wish I had said it first.
The quote was "I have been told dogs do not go to heaven as they have no soul. If that be so please after I die send me to where they go. That is where I wish to be."
On a local Texas TV station last evening I saw an ad for the ASPCA in New York. This one had some celebrity, along with a montage of very sad faces of abandoned or orphaned dogs and cats, making a plea to the viewer to send $18 a month or something like that to save these homeless animals lives.
It is always hard for me to look at the faces of those animals. I have spent too many years in animal shelters on Christmas Day watching the loneliness and confusion in the faces of the animals no one wanted that day or that month or year. Their emotional pain is daunting.
That aside the ad was offensive to me for two reasons. First, unless I am mistaken the ASPCA is a New York based organization that only has animal shelters in New York City so why are they appealing for money from the state of Texas.
Second, in the year 2011 of the 21st century there simply is no excuse for healthy dogs and cats (companion animals) to be killed because there is no home for them.
This was wrong thirty years ago when I ran shelters that killed surplus pets and it is even more wrong now. I was going to vent about this and write some scathing and hopefully clever blog to vilify the ASPCA but coming on TV just a week or so after I saw the ad in “USA Today” questioning the merit in donating to the HSUS (see my blog “Small Satisfactions”) as I began to write I realized that the whole tragedy of pet over population just needs to stop.
I mean we have 50 states with animal control laws that all mandate by statue that if a stray dog or cat is impounded and no one claims the animal after a period of anywhere from 3- 7 or maybe 10 days the state has the authority to kill that animal.
It is the only damn law I know in the USA that lets the criminal, (the owner or person who abandoned or did not take proper care of the pet) go “unpunished” while the victim faces execution. How wrong and screwed up is that?
So I am not going to rant about the millions of dollars the national animal groups take from an uneducated public while paying only lip service to solving the pet overpopulation crisis.
I am not going to talk about the rights of animals and how their having an interest in not being harmed, or tortured, or killed establishes a moral and legal justification for societal protection.
I am not going to get into the politics and fears or address the arguments of those that hunt, eat meat, wear fur, operate zoos, etc., “and so forth and so on ” that feel if we grant special status to dogs and cats that starts us on a slippery slope toward granting moral rights to all animals. Maybe true and maybe past due, but that is not my topic today.
Here is my view on how to end overpopulation of pets.
My assumptions.
They are not property.
They are sentient*.
(*Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think ("reason") from the ability to feel ("sentience"). In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences; clearly dogs and cats can do both).
They are extended members of our family, not totally unlike children who simply never grow up.
This issue has nothing to do with religious views. (Though my personal view is if we have a soul so do they).
Nothing I am about to suggest will stop insensitivity, cruelty, or stupidity when it comes to human beings and their interactions with dogs and cats.
And finally these are my own ideas and opinions. If you have a better one I am all for it. If I missed something let me know.
Ending pet overpopulation and stopping the practice of “euthanasia” (a misnomer if there ever was one) as a population fix is the only thing I am trying to address.
With that all on the table this is what I suggest we do if we want to stop the killing of surplus (homeless, unwanted, etc.) dogs and cats:
Legislate that dogs and cats as companion animals merit a legal status that makes the law protect their basic rights since as sentient creatures they are morally worthy of consideration. You don’t have to philosophize it to death. They sure as hell have an interest in not suffering and in not dying and the government can designate some quasi-personhood status on them that says, not totally unlike children and their parents, these animals may belong to you but they have basic rights you cannot violate without suffering society’s punishment and condemnation.
Next, prohibit commercial breeding for profit. Like driving a car, ownership of pets should be a privilege not a right. If you abuse it you lose it. The first and most basic part of that privilege is as an owner and custodian of these creatures you do NOT have the right to breed them and sell their offspring for a buck.
I am serious, this is just BS. If you have to have a litter charge a pet owner a “one time only” breeding fee of like $500 and make them fill out an application with an enforceable adoption agreement designating where the puppies are going to be placed (before they are born) and that the future owners are responsible, caring, and can afford to take care of the animal. And most importantly no money is exchanged for the puppies or kittens. "Puppy Mills" are abolished and back yard "professional" or "vanity" breeders get one and only one litter.
If pet stores need to have pets to increase sales of pet food and other stuff let them work with local shelters and with adoption contracts feature homeless dogs and for adoption to owners who qualify.
(In the mid eighties I tried to introduce a state bill that would require a breeders license and I was branded a communist, a lunatic, and an idiot, all actually mild accusations given what I have been called in the years since. In any event the effort failed but I remain convinced it is a cornerstone to ending the killing of homeless dogs and cats in the USA).
Next, because I think everyone who is sensitive and caring should have a pet (if they wish) as pets enrich our lives so greatly, establish a 1 cent tax on every dollar of dog food, cat food, and other pet paraphernalia such as leases, bowls, sweaters, chew toys (you get the drift) and establish a national fund to be administered state by state so that financially strapped individuals who qualify can get basic care and support for one pet and one pet only.
You could have a National Pet Protection Coalition (sort of like the Federal Reserve) made up of 5 large sheltered humane societies and 6 small sheltered societies each of whose terms expire after three years and who cannot be re-elected to the Coalition until they have sat out three years and they can administer the fund).
Next, mandate that if a humane society or animal protection group or SPCA does not have shelters and does not house and rescue and adopt homeless and unwanted pets they lose their not-for-profit status.
I am tired of this crap where the national groups rake in millions and create the perception they are saving individual dogs and cats when in fact they are rich, well endowed and have just perfected the business of “compassion for profit.”
Further more, pet owners should unite and get a high profile team of lawyers and file a class action lawsuit against the national animal rights groups alleging fraud (for taking money from the public under the pretense it was to help stop the killing of homeless dogs and cats) over the past ten years and requiring that every national non-sheltered humane group immediately devote no less then 50% of its annual budget and endowments to ending pet overpopulation and its consequence, the killing of homeless healthy companion pets.
The veterinarians are complicit in this tragedy as well. Every small animal practitioner should be mandated by state law to do a specific amount of pro bono work each month. Like law firms and TV stations this should be a requirement for them to keep their license to practice current. Hell, if each small animal vet did ten free (and I mean free, no fees for materials) spay and neuters a month for owners that qualified as needing financial assistance that alone would dramatically diminish the amount of surplus pets.
Make it illegal to ever use a dog or cat (even one specially bred for it) in any form of research. It is the 21st century, find another way to test your drugs and comply with insurance standards.
If the AKC wants to keep registering and breeding purebreds it can, just at the cost of $500 a litter and one litter only and the litter is not for sale. It is too hard on the females to have multiple litters in any event. The AKC can be less of a business and more of a “hobby club”. Given that the whole concept of “pure bred” dog or cat is largely a subjective categorization of “appearances” a hobby club is more appropriate. To me, ultimately, dogs are dogs and cats are cats and breeds are just vanity descriptions determined by humans for a multitude of reasons that no one can really totally articulate.
Humane Societies and animal shelters and municipal pounds have to quit killing surplus or homeless dogs and cats that are healthy and they need to stop today. It just is not right and it has to stop.
In point of fact today’s shelters though largely operated by caring and well meaning people have become modern society’s version of a “sin eater**” for this particular societal disgrace.
(The term sin eater is an ancient description of a person who at an individual's death bed takes food from that person and eats it themselves thus absolving the soon to be deceased of all sin).
In short someone donates to the shelter and the shelter kills the pet taking the guilt and discomfort away from the individual and absolving society as a whole. It lets everyone off way too easy.
People need to know that every day tens of thousands; perhaps more innocent healthy dogs and cats are being killed behind closed doors because in the USA we don’t have the will to say “enough”.
It is our shame and we are the cause and our “pets” should no longer have to pay the ultimate price for our lack of action or will.
If we started working on al of the above today, I believe in less then 9 years or by the end of this decade this decades old tragedy could be only an ugly memory of a harsh and insensitive past.
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