Homeless Animals: Assumptions And Apathy
Print This Post
Nathan Winograd, author of Redemption, posted a scathing article about Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA:
“This isn’t about the battle between the No Kill philosophy and its eventual conquest over regressive, kill-oriented approaches. [...]
“This is about a bully who seeks out animals to kill. This is about the creation of death squads that actively go into communities with the specific purpose of finding dogs and cats to kill. And this is about a movement that has utterly failed to defend the innocent animals being slaughtered. This blog is about Ingrid Newkirk, the President of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). This is about an animal killing, arrogant, disturbed person.”
Ingrid took notice of Winograd (or the CCF) because she posted “Why We Euthanize” and explained:
“I always wonder how anyone cannot recognize that there is a world of difference between painlessly euthanizing animals out of compassion—aged, injured, sick, and dying animals whose guardians can’t afford euthanasia, for instance—as PETA does, and causing them to suffer terror, pain, and a prolonged death while struggling to survive on the streets, at the hands of untrained and uncaring ‘technicians,’ or animal abusers. [...]
“at PETA, we will never turn our backs on neglected, unloved, and homeless animals—even if the best we can offer them is a painless release from a world that doesn’t have enough heart or homes with room for them. It makes it easy for people to throw stones at us”
While I think Winograd went way too far overboard in his criticism, making hateful personal attacks, I think it’s strange that Ingrid recognizes that her position is counter-intuitive, unpopular, and damaging to PETA, yet she doesn’t make a more compelling case defending her actions. Sure, she posted a few gruesome pictures of animals in pain, but that’s not a defense.
Neither is the claim that these animals had to die a good defense for killing them. Where is the proof? She showed pictures, but no stories. It’s assumed that these animals, because their wounds look terrible, were hopeless.
It’s that hopelessness that’s most unappealing about the defenses. Animals are not hopeless. Our movement is not hopeless. Those of us who desire a world where animals truly matter MUST rebel against the hopelessness within our movement.
I remember an episode of DogTown where a dog who seemed hopeless survived after optimistic people took good care of him. Here are two examples of that optimistic no-kill mindset:
I’ve experienced such miracles with my own animal family members. As a child we had a long-haired cat named Blackie who was hit by a car and suffered severe injuries. Two of his legs were broken and a third was dislocated. The first vet we went to suggested euthanasia. The second vet agreed to try to save Blackie. It took many months of intense therapy, but Blackie survived for many years after.
Granted, Ingrid has a point that there is a place for true euthanasia, aka “mercy killing.” Some animals cannot be rescued from their tragic fates. It is most kind to offer a painless end to the suffering when the suffering cannot be overcome or avoided. Anyone who has made the choice to euthanize an animal knows what a painful choice that is. In plenty of circumstances, it’s a kind and reasonable choice. Animals with terminal illness or injury deserve comfort and an end to suffering. Likewise, the technicians and veterinarians who perform such work – whether it’s for animals with homes or animals without homes – deserve sympathy and respect. They are not evil people.
Here is one worker’s account of euthanasia in an animal shelter:
But “lack of homes” is one of the reasons Ingrid cites as a reason to kill, which is a claim Nathan Winograd thoroughly debunks in his book, Redemption. There are enough homes for all the homeless cats and dogs; caring humans just need to work harder or more efficiently at finding and keeping those homes. Ingrid’s assumption that what she’s doing is offering a “painless release from a world that doesn’t have enough heart or homes” is off the mark.
An example from my own life: The Animal Care & Control nearest my current home posts adoptable pets online on petharbor.com but not on petfinder.com. As you probably know, petfinder.com is quickly becoming the online resource for shelters and rescues. And if you’ve been to both sites, you know which one is more user-friendly: petfinder.
So, I sent the Animal Care & Control an email (a polite one, I assure you) asking why they don’t use petfinder. They responded that it would be too much work. Meanwhile, they’re killing animals! According to the statistics published on their webpage, they kill at least 4600 animals per year. They likely kill about 80% of the animals they receive! (They receive approximately 7000 each year and adopt out up to 200 per month.)
I investigated and found out petharbor and petfinder can work together so that shelters can upload to one database and get entered into both. So… there’s virtually no additional work required to get their adoptable animals listed in the premier adoptable pet database. A claim that “it takes too much work” is either borne of ignorance (likely) or outright deceit (unlikely, but not impossible). Either way, making such a claim was irresponsible. “It’s too much work” turns out to be untrue.
While puppymills find homes for their “products” in virtually every stripmall in the city, the pound won’t do the tiny bit of work required to submit their adoptable animal list to the most used online database. Moreover, they aren’t open on Sundays and they don’t do regular adoption events in public areas. It’s almost as if they deliberately lower homeless animals’ chances by making adoptions more difficult than need-be.
The point is, the killing has to stop. The excuses don’t cut it.
We can’t let the apathetic people win. When they justify killing cats and dogs because of a wrong assumption that there isn’t “enough heart or homes” for them, it’s not a far leap to justifying killing cows, pigs, and chickens because there isn’t “enough heart or homes” for them either.
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard anti-vegans claim that “if we all went vegan, there’d be a farm animal overpopulation problem.” Where does that ridiculous claim come from? It comes from the wrong assumption that humans must control animal populations even if that means killing animals. It’s the same assumption that Ingrid makes. And it’s the same kind of assumption that funds and maintains “wildlife management programs” aka hunting. It’s the same kind of assumption that justifies poisoning “nuisance” squirrels and pigeons.Ultimately, it’s a human-centric, paternalistic assumption that simply doesn’t make sense.
As animal advocates, we should work to build a better world for all, not to destroy the lives of some.
Other bloggers make good points in this “debate.” Please take a look:
- PETA at Opposing Views
- Change.org’s Animal Rights blog
- Ingrid Newkirk on PETA’s euthanasia policy
- Yet Another Reason Not To Like PETA
- PeTA is a Selfish Pack of Douchebags
- You??? Please leave a comment here with a link!
We can all do something to help shelter animal’s chances.
Some ideas:
- promote your local shelter on your website, in emails, on web forums, and social networking websites,
- volunteer at your local shelter and offer to help staff adoption events,
- enlist as a foster parent for adoptable animals or encourage others to be foster parents,
- tell people about shelter animals or wear t-shirts that promote rescuing shelter animals.
Thank you. Our shelter just got new software and they are switching over to Pet Harbor…but I like Petfinder better. I was happy to hear that they can keep BOTH, because the critters need all the help they can get.
I was worried that if we all went vegan I’d never be able to rub a cow’s belly or feed her a bagel. Surely there are a few others like me willing to preserve this glorious opportunity?!
Death happens to us all…that’s not good or bad, it just is. It’s the how and when and where part that makes me crazy.
Don’t forget donations! I now ask family members and friends to donate money to shelters and rescue organizations instead of giving gifts at holidays, and give the same.
I also wanted to point out that even people who are uncomfortable spending time with animals, or who don’t want to experience the animals at the shelter, can often find volunteer positions with local humane societies, pounds, and rescues that don’t involve direct contact. There is a tremendous amount of book keeping and paperwork to be done, and many shelters need the help. Putting animals up on petfinder.com is a great example of something that you could volunteer to do.
I’ve mentioned this on my own blog, but I believe there is a tendency for many vegans/animal rights supporters to shunt the immense issues we have with so-called companion animals off to the side. These animals also suffer immensely from the property paradigm, and still need our help.
As for Winograd vs. PETA, there have been similar attacks made on Nathan Winograd in the pas t – that his no-kill revolution results in shelters turning animals away, animals who end up in high kill shelters with no chance of adoption. While I don’t believe this is a logical defense of not supporting the no-kill idea, I think his ad hominem attack on Newkirk is a terrible idea, and easily recognizable as such. It should be enough to say that PETA is a organization with the means to do better by the companion animals that come into their care, and that their own policy demands they do so. After all, it’s not “euthanasia” to put down a healthy, adoptable animal – or even an unhealthy, but capable of recovering animal. Euthanasia is a painless end for a terminal animal, human or non. Anything short of that is just plain killing.
~ Recent blog post: Yet another hypocrisy in an outdated system ~
It’s disingenuous, to say the least, for the deceitfully-named Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) to complain about the number of unwanted and suffering animals whom PETA has been forced to euthanize because their guardians requested it, or because no good homes exist for them.
CCF is a front group for Philip Morris, Outback Steakhouse, KFC, cattle ranchers, and other animal exploiters who kill millions of animals every year, not out of compassion, but out of greed. CCF promotes meat-eating and defends corporations that send billions of cows, chickens, pigs, and other animals to terrifying, gruesome, and painful deaths in slaughterhouses.
PETA handled far more animals than 2,124 in 2008. In fact, we took in more than 10,000 dogs and cats, spaying and neutering all of them at low to no cost. We gave them shots, fixed their wounds and treated their illnesses, and returned them to the community. Most of the animals we took in and euthanized could hardly be called “pets,” as they had spent their lives on heavy chains, for instance. They were unsocialized, never having been inside a building of any kind or known a pat on the head. Others were indeed someone’s, but they were aged, sick, injured, dying, too aggressive to place, and the like, and PETA offered them a release from suffering, with no charge to their owners or custodians.
Those figures also do not include the hundreds upon hundreds of dogs and cats whose suffering PETA works to alleviate by providing them with free food when their owners are poor, clean water buckets, sturdy dog houses, straw for winter, and more, or the hundreds of adoptable dogs and cats we will not take in but refer to walk-in animal shelters and adoption centers. Since 2001, PETA’s low- to no-cost spay-and-neuter mobile clinics, SNIP and ABC, have sterilized more than 50,000 animals, preventing hundreds of thousands of animals from being born, neglected, abandoned, abused, or euthanized when no one wanted them. We also actively decrease the number of animals who end up in animal shelters only to be euthanized for lack of good homes by using star power to promote spaying and neutering in ads across the country.
On a national level, PETA is focusing on the root of the problem through our Animal Birth Control (ABC) campaign. The ABC campaign targets breeders, pet stores, and cat- and dog-breeding mills and in an active way through protests, PSAs, celebrity support, and investigations and puts the blame for the overpopulation crisis squarely where it belongs—with those who breed animals or allow their animals to breed. As long as animals are bred, homeless dogs and cats in animal shelters will die because there simply aren’t enough good homes for them all.
As long as animals are still be purposely bred and people aren’t spaying and neutering their companions, open-admission animal shelters and organizations like PETA must do society’s dirty work. Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis. PETA is proud to be a “shelter of last resort,” where animals who have no place to go or who are unwanted or suffering are welcomed with love and open arms.
You can read more about this in Ingrid Newkirk’s last blog: http://blog.peta.org/archives/2009/03/why_we_euthaniz.php
I must admit that I found your apathy argument interesting, but ultimately unfair. I don’t think it is fair to use one example of a shelter that doesn’t care to work hard enough to find homes for animals and use that example to characterize everyone on the pro-euthanasia side of this debate.
As I’ve said before, there are good and bad shelters out there. The bad ones euthanize as a first resort, the good ones euthanize because they have no better alternatives.
There are also good and bad no-kill shelters out there. The bad ones warehouse animals in miserable conditions (a fate worse than death) or turn animals away to die in the streets or to be euthanized by other shelters (who end up taking the blame). The good ones do everything in their power to provide proper care for animals – but even they must turn animals away when they are at capacity. It’s an unfortuante reality.
I don’t believe there is such thing as an ideal shelter, by definition. As long as there are dogs and cats suffering for a lack of homes (which is a reality) there are going to be tough decisions that will have to be made.
Obviously, everyone should be doing everything they can to find caring homes for these animals. That is without question. And everyone should be working as hard as they can to spay/neuter these animals and to end all breeding. But to say that ALL shelters that are forced to euthanize animals are apathetic is completely off base. Actually, I think it’s rather shameful of you to even suggest that.
It absolutely pains me that euthanasia could ever be considered the best option for any animal. But I realize that there are honest, caring people out there who are doing what they think is in the animals’ best interests. To unfairly judge their motives, or to use an example of a bad shelter to characterize all shelters, just isn’t right.
The world is not perfect. We have not yet achieved animal liberation. Until we do, there will be times when people are forced to make tough decisions – and yes, even decide who lives and who dies.
When vegans choose to feed their rescued cats non-vegan cat food, they are choosing the life of their cat over the lives of fish, chickens, cows and other animals who are violently and painfully murdered in slaughterhouses. Even you, Eccentric Vegan, seem to agree that choosing the life of a cat over the lives (and comfort) of other animals may be an appropriate decision in certain circumstances. In another post you say: “I personally don’t recommend feeding cats veg*n food, but feel free to discuss that topic in the comments below.”
I understand that some cats do not adjust to vegan cat food and will suffer and even die if they don’t eat meat. Allowing domesticated cats (whose very existence we humans are obviously responsible for) to fend for themselves is cruel to cats and to the native wildlife they might decimate. Choosing to feed a cat factory farmed meat, or even so called “humane” meat means choosing to pay for the suffering and deaths of other animals.
My point is, in some cases, there are no easy answers. There may not even be any “right” answers simply because we don’t live in an ideal world.
Until we are successful at ushering in an ideal, vegan world, we humans are going to be forced to make difficult decisions about who lives and who dies. As long as the people who are making those decisions are being honest about their motives and are making sure that they are only taking the lives of animals as a last resort, then I don’t think it is fair to judge them or to say what they are doing is wrong.
And I certainly don’t think it is fair to make assumptions about their alleged apathy.
However, I would like to clarify that, on the whole, I think you post is very thoughtful. And I appreciate that you included links to both sides of the debate. I think you do a great job with this blog and I admire your opinions and convictions. I just didn’t care for the apathy comment. The rest was great. Thank you!!!
Matt said: “there are good and bad shelters out there. The bad ones euthanize as a first resort, the good ones euthanize because they have no better alternatives.”
Agreed. 100% agree.
In fact, near me, there are plenty of good rescue organizations and one shelter that I feel is very good. And of course, I’m not too far of a drive from Best Friends, a prime example of a well-run no-kill shelter.
Oh, and one last thing. Sorry.
I don’t think it is accurate for you to say that Ingrid “doesn’t make a more compelling case defending her actions.”
She very clearly states that PETA does not operate a shelter. Instead, it refers people and their animals to local shelters. However, when animals are in such bad shape and have nowhere else to go, she makes the tough decision to have them euthanized, as a last resort.
She says: “The majority of adoptable dogs are never brought through our doors (we refer them to local adoption groups and walk-in animal shelters)… Euthanasia is not a solution to overpopulation but rather a tragic necessity given the present crisis.”
And it is also inaccurate for you to say she “showed pictures, but no stories” for proof of the necessity of euthanasia. She very clearly told a story of one animal named Asia.
She wrote: “What we see is enough to make you lose faith in humanity. One pit bull we gained custody of, named Asia, looked like a skeleton covered with skin when PETA released her from the 15-pound chain she had been kept on for years. Asia suffered from three painful and deadly intestinal obstructions, which prevented her from keeping any food down. She faced an agonizing, lingering death, so our veterinarian recommended euthanasia to end her suffering. We pursued criminal charges against those responsible for her condition, leading to their conviction for cruelty to animals. That is just one of the dozens of cases we see every week.”
Matt, You’re right, they don’t operate a shelter. Maybe they should. Or… maybe they should outsource this whole thing. What they seem to operate now is a spay, neuter, and euthanasia clinic, though that’s not what it’s called.
Her blog was not compelling to me. The mere fact that she claimed there weren’t enough homes and that she used that false claim to justify euthanasia sounded like a hollow excuse to me.
New topic. You said, “Even you, Eccentric Vegan, seem to agree that choosing the life of a cat over the lives (and comfort) of other animals may be an appropriate decision in certain circumstances.”
Here’s how I think of it: I care more about my family members than I care about strangers. The cats in my family matter more to me than the chickens I never met. I do NOT think it’s OK to sacrifice chickens for the benefit of cats, I do however excuse myself (and others in similar situations) in choosing family members over strangers.
For that reason, and others, I support TNR for feral cats over sheltering stray cats. In fact I’d like to see a world where cats and dogs were accepted in our society with or without human homes, similar to how I think we should accept squirrels and pigeons in our society. I think we should stop trying to manage everything and be more hands-off.
I can’t agree with Lianne’s comments about the animals who are euthanized by PETA, except for those who are terminally ill and in too much unavoidable pain. In the case of animals who “can’t be socialized” – a debatable point, actually – and those who have serious issues that may be treatable or adjusted to – I favor the life of the animal over its death. It may not be possible for PETA to manage certain types of animals – in which case it will take extra effort to find shelters or foster homes that will be able to take those extra steps.
The approach PETA takes is aggressive but leaves out several of the steps. I have no doubt that PETA workers are compassionate and love animals (contrary to some shelter workers) and that they believe there is no alternative for animals that are what they themselves deem “unadoptable”. There are no-kill shelters, notably Best Friends, that give the lie to the assumption that unbeautiful, imperfect animals cannot find homes.
Winograd has taken kill shelters and turned them around. He knows first-hand that it can be done and how it can be done. It is undoubtedly frustrating to him to have to face major animal rights groups that deny what he has done, that won’t admit it’s possible. He too believes in euthanizing incurably ill hurting animals. The two aren’t far off – but that little distance is really a big one, because it’s one of commitment over convenience. When a shelter’s primary goal is to stop the killing then a way is found to do it. And in this context I make the point that “killing” is not the same as “euthanizing”.
I find it hard to get out of my head the memory of the time PETA workers were caught killing healthy dogs and throwing them in a dumpster. The killing is done in the name of compassion, because PETA assumes a dog without a home is a miserable animal always, whether on the street or in a shelter.
Another blog link on that subject: Pet Connection
Winograd may get a bit too personal and angry but he has a valid point. I don’t agree with him that if PETA changed its tune suddenly all shelters would start the turnaround. I think he really knows better. But it would go a long way.