Why Animals?

I have always loved animals, but until four years ago, saving animals was neither my line of work nor a cause I actively supported beyond the occasional small donation.  In addition to a variety of jobs for high-technology corporations and a stint as a personal trainer, I’ve supported or been involved with nonprofits that served children and youth, counseled addicts, and fed the hungry.

When I ventured into work with the local SPCA, the motivation was to spend time with animals; the working conditions, not the cause per se, drew me in. I believed what almost all lay people in the U.S. believe – that the killing of “unwanted” animals in shelters is a necessary evil. Since my local shelter was nominally no kill, I felt assured that I would be able to help while keeping a distance from the reality I knew would be upsetting. Reality struck my first week on the volunteer job: an old Shepherd/Akita mix abandoned by his owner was killed after biting his canine roommate.

At the time, I accepted that the responsibility for the dog’s death rested with the irresponsible owner and dutifully put my other questions out of mind: Why was a dog of a breed known for cornering other dogs placed with a roommate? Why was a dog that had been someone’s pet for 14 years deemed “unadoptable”? (The diagnosis was “lack of bite inhibition.”)

Today a member of our No Kill community sent me the link to a Web site, one of many I’ve seen that displays dogs in immediate danger, dogs on death row. A slideshow on the home page features dogs available now. A page of success stories features dogs saved today. Then there is the memorial page: dogs that died today at the hands of “shelters.”  Looking at these photos made me sick to my stomach—literally.

While I am inspired by the work that the site’s founders are doing, I am disgusted and outraged that people (many of them well-paid) and organizations (many of them sitting on large cash reserves) are failing or simply refusing to do what they are being paid to do, and are leaving this work to private individuals and volunteers. In many cases, they are even impeding these volunteers from doing the job.

Like everyone who works in animal welfare, I hear the question over and over, “Why animals, when there are people in need?” The defense I mustered, without too much reflection, was that there is not a competition among the many good causes in the world; people should devote their time and energy to the one they care about, and there will ultimately be enough good will and good works to go around.

At this point, my commitment to the cause of shelter reform has evolved. We all saw recently what collective catharsis looks like when people danced in the streets on election night; the intensity of the celebration reflects the weight of albatross that was lifted.  Imagine the psychic burden we all carry as we cuddle up in our beds with our dogs and cats while 4 million others like them are put to death in a shelter industry that is, evidently, a backwater that tolerates incompetence and uncaring.

A story: I work with a program whose aim is to help children extract themselves from a subculture of violence and to choose an alternative path in life. Taking the children out of the city and into “nature” is one of the tactics for expanding their worldviews. One year, a wild boar made the error of letting itself be seen close to a campfire one too many times. The kids found the visits exciting. The adults deemed the intrusions on their agenda “disruptive” – and shot the animal.

My answer now to, “Why animals?” is that I think we are lost as long as we leave them behind.  Saving the animals that are part of our families and communities isn’t a luxury for a time when other social problems are solved. Our own redemption depends, in part, on theirs.