Animal Planet itself, for that matter, marked quite a dramatic shift in attitudes when the Discovery Channel introduced it in 1996. It was hardly the first animal-friendly programming for a large audience. Walt Disney had long before that given America his weekly television programs and films—and even before that produced Bambi, which charms audiences to this day and still stands as an enduring indictment of hunting. And then, going back to the early 1960s, there had been nature shows like the popular Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, which gave millions of Americans their first acquaintance with wildlife from around the world. But Animal Planet offered a much wider lens than any of these, covering wild and domesticated animals alike. It’s all animals, all the time, and the first network devoted exclusively to that purpose.
National Geographic television, about the same time, stepped up its own animal programming. And it has had its own share of runaway successes, not the least of which features the “dog whisperer” Cesar Millan, who counsels dogs and their guardians for the benefit of eight million viewers every week. It’s a safe bet that many are looking for tips on how to improve life for their pets, or to better negotiate the terms of their bond with the dog in their lives. There are roughly 171 million dogs and cats in America’s homes—almost three times as many as in the mid-1970s. Then there are the millions of rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, fish, and birds. A census that took note of animals would probably turn up more pets than people in the United States.
Something in the human heart seems to crave their company, and a lot of pet owners will tell you that their lives and family wouldn’t seem quite the same without the nearness of an animal. We let our own animals sleep in our beds, and usually it is their idea. We cook for them and refine the menu according to their reactions. We even buy them pet health insurance, to avoid the high veterinary costs that most people will pay anyway to save or improve the life of a pet.
The pet products and services industry is a more than $45 billion business. PetSmart, a big-box store for pet supplies and services, was not started until 1986 and now has nearly twelve hundred stores. Customers there have the option of rounding up their payments, and these transactions have made PetSmart Charities the largest animal-welfare foundation in the country, in terms of annual giving. Its chief competitor in the marketplace, Petco, also has more than a thousand stores, and it, too, has its own foundation, which also provides millions of dollars to support dog and cat welfare programs.
When Petfinder.com went nationwide in 1998, it provided a whole new world of opportunities for shelter pets. For the first time, those looking to acquire a pet could see animals for adoption at their local shelters from the comfort of their own living rooms—people who otherwise might never check the shelter because of fear it would be depressing or concerns over the health or behavior of animals. PetFinder offered a showcase for homeless pets, and fifteen million dogs and cats have been adopted through the site these past twelve years.
A whole new business of pet sitting has arisen. And pet owners who take off for a few days have the option of high-end “pet resorts” to look after their dogs and cats. Some employers allow people to bring their pets to work and offer day care for pets on workdays.
There are pet cemeteries, as well as grief counseling programs for pet owners who lose their animals. My friend Dwight Lowell lost his beloved dog Chrissie, a rescued border collie mix, and then became clinically depressed. He stopped exercising, withdrew socially, and experienced intense sadness and a feeling of loss he couldn’t shake for months. Millions of Americans know the feeling, and they keep a place in their hearts for animals they once shared their lives with.
Americans now want the best in medical care for their animals, including care for their emotional trouble. Many of the nation’s twenty-eight veterinary schools—which graduate about twenty-five hundred students a year—have developed specialty training programs that prepare students for the new demands of people deeply and emotionally invested in their animals. Dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, and other pets are anything but throwaways for millions of people.
From 1984 to 1996, total veterinary income grew at a rate of 4.9 percent per year (from $4.4 billion to around $7 billion). From 1996 to 2006, veterinary income grew at almost 8 percent per year (from $7 billion to $11.2 billion)—so, in other words, veterinary spending has nearly tripled just in the last quarter century. That’s a sign of rising health-care costs for pets, but also an indicator of the rapidly accelerating demand for these services. An individual can now spend thousands of dollars to prolong an animal’s life, where euthanasia formerly looked like the only logical outcome if an animal had been afflicted by a severe medical condition. Banfield pet hospital runs the largest network of veterinary clinics—some seven hundred, with many co-located at PetSmart outlets. Veterinary hospitals now have oncology centers and offer a range of other services that we used to associate only with human medicine. Dental care is a growing part of veterinary practices. Repair of the cruciate ligament (in the dog’s “knee”) is now an emerging business. Dogs themselves—not just their human guardians—are now treated with antidepressants, and an increasing number of behavior specialists make a living treating aggressive and anxious dogs and maladjusted cats.
There are just a few downsides to America’s interest in pets, problems all the more troubling because they affect the animals we often know and love the best. They fall into the category of too much of a good thing, showing that feelings of love are not enough unless they’re backed up with consistent care and responsible management. Every day across America, thousands of dogs and cats disappear in shelters never to be seen again, despite the best efforts of often heroic shelter workers and volunteers. And many of the dogs and cats in our lives are themselves a product of a system of commercial production that is itself often irresponsible and abusive, while also contributing to the enormous challenges of shelters. These pet producers present themselves as exemplary caretakers and friends of the animals, but in truth are just opportunists trading on the genuine affection and love that the rest of us feel. If we saw for ourselves the needless euthanizing of healthy animals, or the commercial breeding of animals in often squalid and miserable conditions, it would break our hearts as much as anything we witnessed during Katrina.
In the Name of Mercy: Animal Shelters and the Problem of Euthanasia
LOCAL ANIMAL SHELTERS OPENED their doors in many American communities in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Born principally out of concern for the horse, humane organizations had to adapt to changes in our culture and economy, devoting over time an increasing share of their attention to dogs as both pet keeping and animal homelessness grew and the mistreatment of horses waned with the arrival of the automobile. In addition to the private humane societies, governments established municipal animal control agencies, largely to conduct rabies control, stray collection, and euthanasia—with community health and an interest in public order driving the work of these agencies more than any particular concern for the strays themselves.
Over time, private citizens and governments built shelters in towns and cities throughout the nation, and today there are roughly thirty-five hundred brick-and-mortar facilities. In recent years, an estimated eight million dogs and cats entered these shelters—with cats entering and being euthanized in greater numbers than dogs. Upwards of $1 billion a year is spent operating these facilities, the money coming from charitable giving or from local tax dollars.
Aiding their work are thousands of breed rescue organizations, feral cat allies, foster networks, and adoption groups operating without shelters, each one saving as many lives as it can. They are the underground army that provides care and hope for so many animals in need of attention and love. These groups often partner with shelters, to take animals to spare them from euthanasia and increase their prospects for adoption.
Many decades ago, the local shelters, especially the public animal care agencies, took up the grim task of euthanizing dogs and cats in order
to create space for more animals coming in the front door. Most of them had open admission policies, not turning away any animals in need. That created pressure to euthanize in order to prevent overcrowding. In the 1970s, American shelters killed thirteen to fifteen million animals every year. Thanks to vigorous efforts to promote spaying and neutering, to promote adoption, and to keep animals in homes by resolving behavior problems, the number of animals euthanized has been in steady decline. Today, shelters euthanize just shy of four million dogs and cats—of whom some three-quarters are healthy and adoptable.
Over the last twenty years or so, there’s been an emerging no-kill movement, which was first viewed as heretical, its goals unachievable. The rise of that movement was a wake-up call to the shelters of America, calling into question why organizations with a mission to protect dogs and cats would in fact conduct the largest share of killing of companion animals, even if the task was done with regret and by the most humane means available.
The man who provided the intellectual spark for the no-kill movement is Ed Duvin. A student of the civil rights movement, he sought to bring some of its spirit and convictions to the cause of animal protection. Early on, he recognized that although the people who worked in the field of animal sheltering were intensely dedicated and working hard to reduce pet overpopulation, there was something discordant about their work, given how many cats and dogs were being condemned to die.
Duvin was supported in his work by John Hoyt, who ran the HSUS at the time, and was given latitude to express himself freely. Hoyt, to his credit, thought that any serious social movement should support independent thinkers. And in Duvin he saw a clear thinker willing to face the problem squarely. Duvin began writing a regular essay, called “Animalines,” on movement dynamics and mailing it—these were the pre-Internet days—to interested parties.
At the time, the vast majority of philanthropic and government funding devoted to the broad cause of animal protection—probably upwards of 90 percent—went to local animal shelters, and though the euthanasia rates were declining, that was small comfort to the millions of animals who entered shelters and never left. The traditional view held that while the killing was unfortunate, it was a necessary evil. The fault rested with communities that professed to care about the problem but did little or nothing to fund the solution. Shelter personnel had no choice but to clean up the mess created by the rest of society—and they’d be the first to celebrate the end of euthanasia once people sterilized their animals to reduce total numbers, provided lifelong homes for them, and got a larger share of animals from shelters.
The situation dragged along, and even a new generation of activists didn’t have much to say about it. Peter Singer in his landmark work Animal Liberation, published in 1975, addressed pet homelessness and euthanasia only in passing, directing most of his attention to institutionalized cruelties such as factory farming and animal experimentation. Singer’s work prompted the formation of animal organizations in communities and on campuses throughout the country, and some new national groups such as PETA and In Defense of Animals. These newly inspired activists generally subscribed to Singer’s utilitarian view that their energy was best spent in dealing with the hundreds of millions, or even billions, of animals used in science and food production rather than just a few million homeless cats and dogs. Even if they were killed, they were not suffering all that intensely, since shelters generally used humane means of euthanasia. The issue of sheltering seemed both old school and, in relative terms, inconsequential.
Shelters and other more traditional humane organizations did attract the attention of other activists, not because of the moral urgency of euthanasia, but because of their focus on dogs and cats. Many activists got agitated about shelters serving meat at events conducted for the purpose of protecting animals—in fact, HSUS’s national convention was picketed for offering a meat option to attendees in 1987. The shelters were held up as a symbol of society’s general moral laziness and selective standards when it came to animal protection. Singer didn’t say as much, but the implication was that the animal-welfare movement’s focus on sheltering was part of the problem—not because of the euthanasia per se, but because, as critics saw it, too little money was spent on the campaigns that would affect the greatest number of animals at risk.
For his part, Ed Duvin completely understood the evils of factory farming, experimentation, and abuses of wildlife, and he often wrote about them. But he thought that for the humane movement as a whole, shelters had the greatest physical presence in communities and the most contact with the general public. Our movement was, implicitly, sending the message that euthanizing healthy and treatable animals was okay. We built facilities and called them “shelters,” only to kill millions of animals when they got there. It was self-defeating at the very least, he argued, and corrosive to our cause.
“Whether strays or surrenders,” wrote Duvin, “these animals inescapably experience the kind of psychological trauma and terror that we find unacceptable for caged zoo and laboratory animals. Euthanasia might be a relatively painless end to this journey of terror, but each death represents an abject failure for all of us—not an act of mercy.”
“Shelters,” he said in a 1989 essay entitled “In the Name of Mercy,” “represent the last line of defense for homeless animals, and if they fail to wage a full-scale war on behalf of these beings, they cannot rightfully call themselves a shelter—which, by any definition except that of our movement, is a safe haven.”
He added later, in a separate essay, “Shame is what I feel, shame for being in a movement that justifies the institutionalized killing of healthy beings ‘for their own good.’ Indeed, such an assertion is obscene on its face. The mass killing ‘manages’ an animal control problem, but only a morally bankrupt movement would participate in this madness. Healthy animals deserve more from us than ‘gentle’ deaths, and those who continue to embrace a ‘killing them kindly’ ethos perpetuate the tragedy they are charged with ending. If as much energy and resources had been expended on anti-breeding programs as on controlling and killing the excess, the slaughter would have long ago ended.”
George Orwell observed that the first obligation of the intelligent man is sometimes to restate the obvious, and this is what Duvin did for the shelter movement. He showed the power of a simple truth spoken plainly. Much as Singer’s condemnation of factory farming galvanized an entire movement, Duvin raised his voice to demand that animal shelters be true to their name.
It fell to shelter operators to put high principle into everyday practice, and some were committed to showing that it could be done. Rich Avanzino, of the San Francisco SPCA, took a major step in the right direction by providing an “adoption guarantee” for every animal he took in. On the other coast, meanwhile, director David Ganz of the North Shore Animal League on Long Island built his operation around the same idea. With a brilliant marketing campaign, he also showed that if you raise the banner of true sheltering, without killing healthy animals, the public will get behind the effort. In fact, Ganz took a small suburban shelter and turned it into what, for a time, was the largest animal-welfare group in America. Far from being apathetic, people were ready to embrace this more hopeful objective, and to shake off the mind-set that accepted euthanasia as the best we could hope for.
Today, many of the major national animal-protection organizations have embraced the goals of the no-kill movement, including HSUS, the ASPCA, the National Federation of Humane Societies, and Best Friends Animal Society. They are just the best known among hundreds of such organizations, and many shelters do not explicitly brand themselves as “no kill” but are still striving to reduce and end euthanasia of healthy animals. Rich Avanzino now runs the largest pet foundation in the country, Maddie’s Fund, named for the beloved dog of founders Cheryl and David Duffield. The bond these two generous people had with their dog Maddie has inspired a wonderful charitable endeavor that is saving tens of thousands of lives, in pursuit of the goal of a “no-ki
ll nation.” It provides $20 million a year—second in grant making only to PetSmart Charities—for community-wide programs built on the conviction that homes can be found for every healthy dog and cat. An increasing number of major city shelters are following the no-kill objective, including the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals. What was once the far-off goal of a few scattered shelters is today the operational model for America’s largest city.
This progress in New York, moreover, is part of a fairly dramatic change for the better across much of the Northeast. For one thing, many shelters—and not just in that region—are a world away from old and dilapidated structures that we still associate with the dog pound, somewhere down by the railroad tracks or the town dump. There’s been a building boom in shelters, and when you walk through these state-of-the-art facilities, there’s a new sense of pride and hope. Just as important, many shelters are now run by professionals who’ve been at it for a while and over time have developed a mix of strategies and programs that have their communities within striking distance of the goal of a home for every healthy animal. They know, better than anyone, that making no-kill policy a reality is not just a matter of flipping a switch. It takes low-cost spaying and neutering; adoption efforts at various locations, instead of just the shelter at the edge of town; keeping pets with their families for behavior training, instead of relinquishing them; and developing a community-wide network of adoption and foster groups all working in sync. These are the basics of the formula that is making such a difference in the Northeast, where euthanasia rates have declined rapidly; some shelters are actually importing shelter dogs from elsewhere to meet local demand—not only finding homes for those dogs, but at the same time creating space for strays in those other regions.
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