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A Little Criticism for the Raw Diet

As Mark says, canines are omnivores. Vegans, however, are not. (Actually not all canines are omnivores; some are exclusively carnivorous, and some eat mainly insects.) The biggest flaw in the vegan dog argument is the proposed leap from omnivore to herbivore; being an omnivore doesn't mean you can eat one or the other, it means you eat both, and it also doesn't mean that you eat equal amounts of each, or that one is as important as the other. In the case of dogs, meat is of the utmost nutritional importance, and fruits and vegetables are supplementary. We feed an omnivore diet here that includes raw meat, raw organs, and raw fruits and vegetables - the stuff that wild canines eat. Unlike some bears, which might be found eating an entirely vegetarian diet in the wild, nearly all other members of the order Carnivora, including the wolf, Canis lupus, of which the domestic dog is a subspecies, eat other animals. And the farther one gets from the equator, the more meat-eating one finds, so that the Carnivora species living near the poles eat only meat, while those living in the temperate zones might eat an exclusively animal-based diet in the winter and a more omnivorous diet during the growing and fruiting seasons.

If we're to base our decisions on what is most appropriate for an animal to eat on the dietary habits of its wild counterparts, then certainly we have to conclude that dogs need meat in their diets. Truthfully, the only way one would ever draw the conclusion that a dog should eat a vegan diet would be for that person to begin his/her study of nutrition with the foregone conclusion that dogs should be vegan, followed by the gathering of data to support it. No nutritionist with any degree of objectivity would look at the pool of data available and conclude that dogs don't need meat in their diets, if for no other reason than the fact that every wild dog in the world eats some kind of meat, and the nutrients that are vital to a dog's survival are all found in meat.

The life of a predator is dangerous. Every time a wild dog goes on a hunt, it risks injury and death. Scavenging dogs risk being attacked by other predators. Even their preferred food itself can kill them if they don't eat it carefully, the splintered bones of ducks and other wildfowl being common culprits. It's not an easy existence. Herbivores, on the other hand, while still at risk of predation, don't generally have to fight for their food and risk being killed by a potential meal. If wild dogs could survive as vegans, I'm pretty sure they would try, being supremely adaptable and opportunistic. Imagine a pack of wolves that could survive on vegetable sources alone - they would be essentially invulnerable to predators, thanks to their intelligence, social structure, and sharp teeth, and never having to risk their safety to hunt, individuals might live into their 20s before dying of old age. You never see that, though, because a dog can't survive on a naturally available vegan diet; it can only survive on one that's formulated for it by a human being, either in a laboratory or in the kitchen.

And let's look at that diet: the vast majority of commercial vegan dog foods contain various forms of wheat, corn, and soy - things that are indigestible and toxic to dogs, that have been linked to numerous cancers and other health concerns, and that don't, by themselves, provide a complete and balanced diet. A dog can live a long life on nothing but meat, because while dogs are behaviorally omnivores, they are anatomically and physiologically carnivores. Feed a dog only wheat, corn, and soybeans, and you won't have a dog to feed for very long; the vegan dog food manufacturers will be quick to tell you so. Dogs require all manner of nutrients in their diets that naturally occur in meat and animal fat, but for vegan dogs these nutrients have to be manufactured. Studies are showing that the metabolism of these laboratory ingredients is less efficient and more physiologically taxing than the metabolism of the same ingredients in their natural sources. Simply put, consuming lab-manufactured nutrients is not as healthy as simply eating foods that naturally contain them. Add to that something I discussed in a previous post, the fact that the vegetable forms of certain nutrients, like Omega-3 fatty acids, are not the specific ones dogs are best able to process and utilize, and you have foods that, frankly, are just all wrong. Close, perhaps, but no cigar.

In a survey of the ingredients of some of the top, commercially available vegan and vegetarian dog foods, as a caregiver who relentlessly vets ingredients and researches nutrition to ensure that my dogs are receiving the best diet I can provide them, I have a difficult time finding any ingredients I would want my dogs to eat unless I had no other option:

Avoderm: out of 40 ingredients, only carrots, peas, and dried kelp

Evolution: out of 52 ingredients, only carrots and kelp meal

Natural Balance: out of 45 ingredients, only carrots, peas, parsley flakes, and dried kelp

Natural Life: out of 46 ingredients, only dried kelp

Nature's Recipe: out of 36 ingredients, none

Next to Nature: out of 44 ingredients, only organic apples, organic peas, organic carrots, organic kelp, and organic cranberries

Three Dog Bakery: out of 33 ingredients, only carrots and peas

V-Dog: out of 37 ingredients, only beet pulp, peas, rosemary, and parsley

Wenaewe: out of 36 ingredients, only organic carrots, organic red beets, and organic broccoli

Wysong: out of 55 ingredients, only dried kelp and artichoke

Of the above listed foods, none has a minimum protein content above 28%, with the possible exception of V-Dog, which claims to be a high protein food, but doesn't provide the minimum percentage on its website. Six of the foods surveyed were under 20%. In contrast, most grain-free dog foods have minimums above 40%. Most of the surveyed foods also have minimum fat percentages below 10%, compared with the typical 15-20% found in grain-free foods. Natural Life, one of the worst of the bunch, is 17.5% protein, 7.5% fat, and has up to 7.5% ash. Yes, your dog could be getting equal amounts of fat and ash in this vegan diet. Nature's Recipe, possibly the worst of the group, has the same percentages, minus the ash. Wenaewe is the best brand surveyed, and the only brand that lists the 'good stuff', carrots, beets, and broccoli, among its primary ingredients, while all the other brands have them buried amid the various laboratory compounds needed to mimic the benefits of real meat and fat. Three Dog Bakery's peas and carrots come second and third-to-last in the ingredients. And by the way, of all those supplements that these foods require to make something that approaches the nutritional completeness of a true omnivore diet, some of them, like vitamin-A and vitamin-D, come from animal sources; more than half the foods surveyed aren't even truly vegan. And Next to Nature has powdered eggs. It seems even the manufacturers who tell you your dog doesn't need food from animal sources have a hard time making their products without going to animal sources, the truly vegan exceptions being only Evolution, Natural Balance, and Natural Life.

There are some vegan foods that I might consider feeding as a supplement or to a dog with digestive issues (we did this for one dog for several months after his immune system had essentially shut down in the aftermath of a major surgery; he teetered on the brink of starvation, and eventually we weaned him back onto meat and he's much better now) but there are far more drawbacks than benefits. But as I said at the beginning of this post, no one would feed a dog a vegan diet if it was about proper nutrition, so it must be about something else, and it's pretty clear what that is, as demonstrated by Mark's comment: "Disgusting." It's not about nutrition, it's about feelings, and feelings have their place, but they are, in my opinion, one of the biggest obstacles to an effective animal protection movement.

I find myself wishing that discussions of veganism and vegetarianism would center around ethics and stay away from emotional value judgments, because the 'he didn't want to die' argument is absolutely hollow. I don't want to die either, but someday I will. Everything dies, it's the way life works, you can't change it, and it totally sucks, but it's also fascinating how life has developed in such a way that the death of one organism, be it a single-celled algae or a water buffalo, is necessary for the life of another to continue. Far-removed from the horror of the modern factory farm, death sustaining life is playing out more times per day than we can hope to count, and there's something to that, because it's a little piece of the Law of the Universe, which was well in effect long before a small percentage of the human race decided to break with thousands of years of history and cultural development and millions of years of evolution and go vegan. We would be fools to look at the ecosystem around us and suggest that wild predators have no right to eat meat, but do our domestic animals, with the same anatomy and physiology, not also have a right to the foods they are most ideally suited to eat?

The question we should be asking, in my opinion, is not whether or not it's acceptable to feed a meat-eater meat, but rather, how should that meat be obtained? Is there an ethical way to produce meat commercially? Are there acceptable trade-offs? Does an animal's ecological niche have any relevance to its role within human societal constructs? And in response to those questions, there is ample room for differing opinions and vibrant discussion while maintaining a focus on ethics and setting emotions aside, lest they reveal us all to be hypocrites. After all, that vegan diet probably spent some time in the back of a truck, and that truck killed thousands of insects, maybe some rabbits or even a deer, and spewed all kinds of toxins into our atmosphere and watersheds in order to deliver a more humane meal to a local grocery store; those insects, rabbits, and deer didn't want to die either, and no one asked for more pollution. Vegans kill animals too, but at least my wolves eat them after their dead.

I once drove to eastern Washington to rescue a dog; I saved his life, but on the way there, I hit a deer. So did I save a life that day, or was it canceled out? Bogart is glad I made the trip, but that deer might still be alive if I hadn't. A lot of animals have died to feed our dogs; do the math and it's clear that far fewer lives would be lost if we simply destroyed the dogs. Even on a vegan diet, the damage done by agriculture and shipping would almost certainly outweigh the societal benefit of keeping these animals alive, so what should we do? There are no easy answers, but I will never stop asking the questions, and in the meantime, I'll continue to place a priority on the lives entrusted to me, and hope that, as I believe, I am doing the right thing.

And besides, who asked you, anyway? I like vegans, but self righteous vegans can eat me.

-Steve

Posted on February 9, 2011 | Link

BS(L)

A supporter asked me to respond to Scott Bennett's article in The Examiner in support of a ban on "pit bulls". First, I'd like to ask Mr. Bennett what a pit bull is. It's one of the first problems with breed specific legislation directed at the so-called pit bull - "pit bull" isn't a dog breed. It's an unofficial group, and the actual breeds included in it vary depending on what 'expert' you talk to. The American Pit Bull Terrier is generally included, although the AKC doesn't recognize the breed. The other two that are almost always on the list are the American Staffordshire Terrier and the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Some insurance companies list the Presa Canario, the American Bulldog, and others as pit bulls, despite the fact that the aforementioned breeds were developed for use as stock dogs, not fighting dogs. And in addition to this nomenclature-generated confusion, there is also the problem of questionable lineage - that fact that the overwhelming majority of so-called pit bulls are not purebred dogs, and many lack any American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, or Staffordshire Bull Terrier ancestry at all. Breeders are notorious for forging paperwork and crossing breeds to produce traits not commonly found in true pit bulls; for instance, the 'blue-nosed pit' that is so popular of late often has a Weimeraner in its family tree.

The situation is at its worst in animal shelters, where any muscular dog with a fat head is labeled a pit bull, and in many cases destroyed purely on the basis of its appearance. In other cases, dogs are held to a far higher standard to other breeds/types with regard to their behavior, expected to be ambassadors for a breed they don't even belong to - a practice promoted and defended by many claiming to be pit bull rescuers.
"Simply stated," Scott Bennett doesn't know what he's talking about. He states that pit bulls are more intelligent and athletic than other dogs, which simply isn't true. According to Stanley Coren's work on the comparative intelligence of different dog breeds, none of the pit bull group even made the top ten, and the two Staffordshire breeds were considered merely average or slightly above average when it came to their abilities as working dogs and their responsiveness to obedience training. With regard to athleticism, I submit that pit bulls are considered amazing athletes compared with other breeds because they have short fur and tight skin, traits that show off their musculature. They are nearly absent from many contests of canine athletics, like agility and flyball, sports dominated by the herding breeds and smaller terriers, though they excel in weight pulling, alongside huskies and malamutes.

Mr. Bennett's suggestion that pit bulls are stubborn and aggressive defies quantification and suggests a great deal of Freudian projection on his part; in my own work I've found pit bull-type dogs to be focused and single-minded, hardly the same thing. The notion that they are "hell on wheels" without training is a matter of opinion, to say the least, and in this case, it's the opinion of a dog trainer - Scott Bennett, who would love to have your business.

Mr. Bennett says that pit bulls are working dogs and their job is fighting to the death. I hardly think this is what the kennel clubs have in mind when they talk about the working breeds. Mr. Bennett insists that the dogs love to fight and kill; he clearly doesn't have experience with fighting dogs, or if he does, that experience was so colored and tainted by his prejudices and preconceptions that he didn't learn a thing from it. I feel like I can speak to the subject, as I have several trained fighting dogs in my sanctuary and am in regular contact with a community of people who are involved in fighting dog rescue: these dogs fight because they're taught to do so, and their lives are filled with misery and torture. The life of a fighting dog is not one of ecstasy, where the dogs get to do what they love. The dogs are in hell. They hate what they do, and they do it out of fear - 'kill him before he kills me'. The dogs are never happier than they are when they're taken away from that life and never put in a position to fight again. To suggest that the dogs fight for pleasure, purely on the basis of their breed, is ridiculous. Some dogs fight. Some don't. Some pit bulls are highly reactive. So are some border collies, poodles, golden retrievers, and my favorite dogs - mutts. Other pit bulls are shockingly non-combative. And by the way, most of them would rather chase a ball than kill another dog.

Mr. Bennett really reveals that he doesn't know what he's talking about when he says that 'one cannot look at a dog and recognize its breed' but that if the dog is a pit bull the chances are higher that it will bite you - if you can't recognize the breed, how do you know it's a pit bull (which is not a breed)? Mr. Bennett goes on to appeal to the likes of Kenneth Philips and Merrit Clifton, who are notorious for shoddy studies and twisting data to support their foregone conclusions. Want to know why there are more pit bull bite incidents than bites from other breeds? It's pretty simple:

1. Pit bulls are popular dogs. If your city has 100 golden retrievers and 10 Labrador retrievers, guess which breed is going to be reported more often for biting.
2. Pit bulls have a bad reputation, so when they do bite, it gets reported more often than when other types of dogs bite.
3. Pit bulls are one of the favorite dogs of idiots and irresponsible people who fail to observe the type of safety precautions that should be taken with any dog.

Mr. Bennett asserts that it is 'miraculous' that dog owners stated that when their dogs bit, it was their first known dangerous behavior. When a dog bites someone, the owners often think of their own liability, and they don't often tell people about all the warning signs leading up to the incident. It's also worth noting that most people don't know enough about dogs to recognize a lot of those signs, something Mr. Bennett should realize as a professional dog trainer.

Mr. Bennett tries to conclude his article as if he has presented a simple, deductive argument, but he fails to prove any of his assertions leading up to his conclusion. He states that pit bulls are potentially dangerous and must be regulated. Well, Mr. Bennett, "potentially dangerous" is a legal designation given to a dog, in most jurisdictions, after it injures a person or animal, not before. If the potential for danger is reason enough to ban an animal, we may need to look at some of the other hazards in our daily lives and regulate them appropriately as well. For instance, the statistics regarding injuries and deaths to children from dog attacks are nearly identical to those from school activities. Perhaps schools need to be declared dangerous. About 30 people are killed by dogs every year in America, but thousands die in auto accidents. About 17,000 are murdered. Over 200,000 are killed as a result of mistakes made by doctors. Huh. It's starting to look like people are a lot more dangerous to one another than pit bulls, not to mention the danger they pose to pit bulls - we kill around half a million of them every year in this country.

I work almost exclusively with dogs with bite histories, and of the hundred animals in my facility, only a handful are what Mr. Bennett would call 'pit bulls'. The pit bulls I have are not my more severe cases; they are typically victims of the type of hysteria Mr. Bennett would like to promote. One declared potentially dangerous for scratching someone with his toenail; one deemed non-adoptable after a bite that no one witnessed and that produced no visible wound; you may remember Snaps, who was beaten and forced to attack two women in Seatac in 2009 - he's one of the gentlest dogs I've ever known. He's also, despite the reports about him, not a pit bull. Oops.

Yes, some dogs bite, and some of those are pit bulls. Regardless of how you choose to interpret the date, whether you love pit bulls or hate them, whether or not you like dogs at all, perhaps the most compelling reason that breed specific legislation is a terrible idea is this: it doesn't work. Shelters are already having a hard time handling the number of impounded animals they have to deal with; how much worse will it be when they are flooded with pit bulls? What will it cost the taxpayers to kill all of those dogs? Shelters offset the care of the dogs they house with the fees they charge for their adoption - not an option with a banned breed dog. We'll all get to eat that expense. Then there will be the appeals; the burden of proof falls on animal control when it comes to what breed a dog is or is not, so the taxpayers will have a lot of canine DNA tests to pay for as well. And if you think that making something illegal is an effective deterrent, you're right, because robbery, narcotics, murder, and rape are all things of the past since we made them illegal. Oh, wait... that's not true at all, so I guess you'd be wrong. Some people will comply with the law. Some will move to a more animal friendly community, which hurts the local economy. Many will simply keep the dogs in secret, which begs the question, would you rather have pit bulls in the open where we can keep track of them, where they're licensed and vaccinated, or would you prefer them to go underground, where they are unable to be accounted for, where they don't receive vaccinations and basic health care because people are afraid to take them to the vet. Want rabies? Want your dog to get parvovirus or canine distemper? BSL's an excellent step in that direction.

It used to be German Shepherds. It used to be Doberman Pinschers. It used to be Rottweilers. Today it's "pit bulls". Tomorrow it will be something else. Or maybe common sense will prevail. It pains me to say so, but I kind of doubt it.

Posted on January 20, 2011 | Link

Dogs Matter

an article by Steve Markwell

Whether we're lavishing them with affection, maligning them for their violent behavior, parading them around as fashion accessories, or utilizing them as tools to aid us in our work or recreation, dogs are a pretty big deal. They mean different things to different people, but they mean something to just about everyone on the planet, and that's significant - you can't say that about cell phones, Volkswagens, hedgehogs, ball bearings, or lemon trees. You can't say that about most things in the world.

Like it or not, dogs are among us, almost everywhere on Earth where we, human beings, live. There are a very few exceptions: the occasional, tiny island, and perhaps a handful of remote and inhospitable locations where only the most intrepid researchers and explorers dare to tread. But assuming you don't live in one of those places, and that you don't spend your days confined indoors with the curtains drawn, when was the last time you went an entire day without seeing a dog? Even prison inmates, isolated from the rest of the world, are likely to see dogs on a fairly regular basis.

Anthropologists, historians, and biologists don't all agree about when the first domestic dogs emerged, but it was likely around 100,000 years ago, DNA and anatomical studies suggesting that the animals were Tibetan wolves that came in from the cold. This was probably not a single, isolated incident, but rather, a tendency of certain wolves, and a scenario that repeated itself any number of times and is still repeating itself to this day in different locales. It was also likely a slow transition as opposed to a single, definitive gesture on the part of any one wolf or group of wolves. Wolves living on the fringes of human settlements reaped the benefit of being able to pick through our leftovers; rodents abound in human communities as well, providing a steady food supply, even when leftovers aren't available, and those first dogs certainly enjoyed the added security that comes with having a neighbor who is especially proactive about protecting himself from larger predators, like leopards and bears.

For the human beings, these small wolves posed a minimal threat while providing the valuable service of eliminating disease-carrying vermin, and they, too, would have done their part to keep larger predators at a distance. As the relationship between wolf and human being developed, the two species became hunting partners. They protected each other with ever growing intention. They came to depend upon each other. A symbiotic relationship came into being, in which primitive dog and primitive man became interdependent in order to survive.

The process of domestication can be observed today in various stages in different parts of the world; 'pariah dogs' are those same wolves that have not fully committed to a partnership with humankind, but yet could not survive without us. They may interbreed with our domestic dogs and mix with feral animals, escaped pets that have reverted to a wild state and formed stable populations, but they are not domestic animals, they are wildlife in transition. Bring one home, as I have done more than once, and you'll see what I mean.

The process was further convoluted and the line between dog and wolf further blurred in areas where domestic dogs and wolves lived side by side, and by the efforts of various peoples to breed their dogs to wild or wild-caught wolves, as happened routinely in North America and continues to take place in northern areas today. In much of the United States and northern Mexico, dogs interbreed regularly with coyotes, and it's likely that this is also nothing new. In ancient Egypt domestic dogs may have been intentionally bred to jackals as well. This broadens the definition of what a 'dog' truly is, while geneticists continue to point out that in spite of all of its hybridizing over thousands of years, the domestic dog is genetically a wolf, not differing enough even to constitute a separate subspecies, regardless of the fact that taxonomists have chosen to name it as such, Canis lupus familiaris.

For those wolves who did commit to our arrangement, whether willingly or by force, coming in from the cold was only the first of many transitions. As it was discovered just how many different things dogs could do for us, a process of 'forced specialization' began to take place. We took greater control over our canine companions' lives, the most significant manifestation of which was to control their breeding for the perpetuation of various traits that we valued in them. Some dogs were bred to hunt by sight, some by smell, some to go underground in search of prey; some dogs were bred to herd livestock, others to protect livestock, and others to protect us and our homes; some were bred to fight with bears, with bulls, and with each other for our sadistic amusement; some were bred simply to be our friends. What they all have in common, though, is that they were bred for purposes of human design, in a process that continues to this day.

The significance of our shared history with dogs is fairly simple - for as long as there have been human beings as we know them, they have lived with dogs. Not every person has had a dog, and different cultures have treated dogs differently around the world and over the millenia, but by and large, where there have been human beings, there have been dogs living in a symbiotic relationship with them, and that constitutes more than a mere tendency of our species or the willingness of the other species to be controlled by us. From an anthropological, ecological, and behavioral standpoint, the relationship between human being and dog is something both species need, and it's likely we need it on some levels more than any of us realizes.

Do a little research and you'll find studies demonstrating that people with dogs (and cats) have a longer life expectancy, how spending time with companion animals reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, even gives people a reason to live. The findings of various researchers are so convincing that some doctors even prescribe adopting a dog or cat to their patients, and pet therapy programs are becoming an increasingly common phenomenon in retirement homes, children's hospitals, and group homes. Perhaps more remarkable than our apparent psychological and physiological need for companion animals in our lives, however, is the instinctive drive that causes domestic dogs, Canis lupus familiaris, to crave interaction with us. As one of the few people in the nation who works with the wildest feral dogs and the least socialized puppy mill and animal hoarding survivors, I've seen firsthand how even the most terrified dogs find themselves overcome by an urge to be in the presence of a human being. I may not be able to lay a hand on a dog for months, even years, but the animal willingly follows me around the property, sleeps in the same room as I do, sniffs my hand or my foot when he or she thinks I'm not paying attention. There's a desire for connection I've seen in many mammal species, including wild cats, bears, and numerous smaller carnivores, but in no species is the desire so strong as it is in domestic dogs and their hybrids. It seems there's 'something' about human beings that draws animals to us and us to them, but the relationship between human and dog represents a degree of connectedness unmatched by our relationships with other species, even domestic cats.

Humans have, of course, as we are prone to do, exploited our connection to dogs to the utmost degree, often minimizing our own responsibility in our symbiotic relationship and putting the bulk of the weight of maintaining it squarely on the dogs' shoulders. They became our property, to do with as we pleased and to dispose of at any time, for any reason, by any method.

Most dogs in the world, if they 'belong' to someone, have jobs to do, and for most of them, that job is security. A dog's job is to protect people and their property, to frighten would-be intruders and to attack those who don't heed their warning. They are to give their lives for our safety, or in order that we might keep our 'stuff', and they are to kill for us should we desire it. It's hard to say how a dog biting the wrong person has been dealt with historically speaking; it's likely that the offending dog was often killed, and it's equally likely that the occasional bite was expected to occur, given the animal's wildness, as well that of our own, in those early years of its domestication. But a dog who killed livestock was almost certainly never tolerated, nor is it likely that a dog who injured a child ever had much of a future.

But things change, don't they?

In the western world, western Europe, the United States, and Canada in particular, there has been somewhat of a paradigm shift, and in a relatively short amount of time the tasks for which we bred and trained dogs and the behaviors we demanded of them have fallen out of favor. We human beings have adopted a more 'enlightened', 'civilized' lifestyle, and we now expect our dogs to do the same, 100,000 years of evolution be damned. Dogs were rarely held in as high a regard as they are today by we westerners, possible exceptions being certain Native American tribes and ancient Egyptians, but while we call them our friends, companions, even members of our families, we also hold them to a higher standard by which violence against us, regardless of its severity, is not allowed. That same standard of behavior doesn't extend to us, however.

We kill dogs by the millions, and breed millions more. Most are killed because they are surplus property; we don't know what else to do with them - these animals that lengthen our lives and add to life's quality. But others are killed because they have had the audacity to refuse to evolve into the docile, abiding, obedient possessions we desire them to be. Some have succumbed to their instinct to hunt and kill; some have failed to control the urge to fight in defense or for the acquisition of territory; others, in sheer defiance of our wishes, have dared to injure us, their almighty and all-important human superiors, in response to our threats against them, whether those threats were real or perceived. Even in those frequent instances when their undesirable behaviors were acted out at the behest of their human caregivers, we have always been ready to dispatch the animals without a second thought, whether with a needle in some quiet, back room, or with a bullet in the plain sight of anyone caring to watch or unfortunate enough to be accidentally present at the scene.

Some recent emails from a rather unworthy opponent of my life's work summed up our species' attitude quite well: "DEATH to dogs like this!!!!! Good riddance," and, "What's the big deal with killing it? It's a liability." That she didn't even know the gender of the animal in question belies her utter lack of concern for anything but herself and that which is outwardly similar to herself, but she has forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that for 100,000 years, we humans and dogs have been part of the same society, and in a society, the more intelligent, more sophisticated, more capable members are expected to care for and defend those not competent to do for themselves, as well as to indemnify them and assume accountability for their actions. That my detractor appealed to the liability associated with allowing the dog to live simply revealed her hypocrisy, because when it comes to liabilities, no species presents so many of them as does our own. In my short response to her last message, I explored the issue of liability a bit farther: "Ever drive a car? How many people are killed in auto accidents every year? That's a huge liability. We should ban cars and kill anyone who drives one. Ever go to the hospital? Doctor error kills over 200,000 Americans a year - serious liability there. Let's kill doctors. Dogs kill 15-30 people a year, while bees kill around 100 - have you ever sent one of your abusive emails to a beekeeper? 'DEATH to all bees'?"

It's a quite fair comparison: cars improve the quality of our lives, and so do dogs; doctors help us live longer and make us healthier, and so do dogs; bees provide us with a commodity that no other animal can, and arguably, so do dogs. But while all of them kill and injure us far more often than dogs do, only dogs have spawned a litany of legislation with the same bottom line - death to the dog. It defies logic and any sense of fairness, unless of course we are to believe that some laws are enacted as a result of our powerful, emotional responses to certain phenomena, as opposed to any real necessity stemming from some kind of widespread social ill. And few phenomena invoke a more primal, more powerful emotional response than that which a human being, a primate, a prey species, experiences when he or she is bitten or attacked by a dog, a predator, one of nature's many killing machines. In short, the realization that we are vulnerable awakens in us an innate sense of which our primitive ancestors were keenly aware, along with most of the planet's animal species, that the world is full of things that would like not only to hurt us or kill us, but to eat us. It sucks to be on the menu.

It sucks so much, in fact, that many scientists credit the predator-prey relationship with being the major force that spurred our evolution, causing us to walk upright that we might have a better view of our surroundings, and to develop the large, unwieldy brains and unrivaled intelligence that allowed us to outwit, overpower, and even replace our would-be predators. But still, there are times when one of us is caught at a disadvantage to one of them, and that makes us feel like some lesser form of ourselves; relative powerlessness is one thing for which we as a species have definitely evolved a strong disliking. And it would also be irresponsible of me to ignore the degree to which we love and care for our fellow human beings, but that, too, may be dependent upon our intellect and our social behavior that derives from an instinctive knowledge that there is safety in numbers, therefore making it a result of the fear of being eaten that motivated our development as a species.

When tragic, terrifying, life-altering events take place, "when the dog bites, when the bee stings," the desire for revenge is understandable, but at some point we need to be rational, compassionate, and forgiving, otherwise we're no better than our warped perception of the very animals we want so badly to see destroyed. Beyond that, to take revenge on an animal is, for lack of a better word, silly; it demonstrates a lack of self control and an inability to view a situation with even the smallest amount of objectivity, the capacity for each being traits that supposedly set us apart as a species. It's an animal! To seek vengeance against an animal is akin to seeking vengeance against a toddler, the primary distinction being that in most cases a two-year-old is more intelligent and has a greater sense of right and wrong, and is thereby, according to our actual values, as they are betrayed by our practices, more deserving of our wrath. I'll be the first to point out that a child is deserving of nothing but our love and understanding, but if that is indeed the case, is not a creature of lower intelligence, with less comprehension of the consequences or significance of its actions, and a minimal ability, if any, to internalize the complexity that is human ethics and morality, worthy of at least as much compassion and forgiveness as a child? Or shall we continue to answer death with death, neither making the world safer for us nor easing the pain that comes from our loss?

And the truth is that we're not even answering death with death; we're answering a bite with death, a growl with death, a lunge with death, leaving very little doubt as to the existence of monsters in the world.

In response to an article about Olympic Animal Sanctuary in the Los Angeles Times, one reader wrote about her son, who, upon having his dog confiscated and killed after the animal had bitten someone, took his own life. Each time I think about it, I get that sinking feeling most of us have had at one time or another, and having never had or lost a child, I can't begin to imagine what the man's mother must feel every day of her life. But suicide over the loss of a pet is not an unfamiliar story. We became involved in a case in which after a Siberian husky killed a small dog, he was seized and ordered to be destroyed, and his companion, a boy with Asperger Syndrome, attempted suicide; we fought with the county for weeks to gain custody of the dog, in large part to save the animal, but much more in a desperate attempt to save the boy. We won that fight, but we've lost a few as well, and there have been countless others in which we were never involved.

Some will be quick to point out that the people who have lost children to dogs, or lost their pets to them feel the same loss as the people I've just mentioned, and they're right. Perhaps they're the only ones who truly understand that kind of loss, and you might be surprised to know how often we receive requests from the victims, their families, and those who have lost beloved pets to dog attacks to rescue the animals that committed them. They comprise at least half of the requests we receive, in fact. It can be attributed to one, simple and important certainty: Dogs matter. They all matter - not just the 'nice' ones, not just the easy ones, or the cute ones, or the expensive ones. Too often we fail to see just how much they matter, or to whom, and that failure is to the detriment of all of us.

All the preceding aside, dogs matter because life matters. Life is worth something, and a death that does not in turn create and enrich life is one without purpose. The waste of a life is a detestable offense, and I must ask, if a dangerous animal can be prevented from harming the innocent and at the same time be allowed to live a life of quality and meaning, is that not vastly preferable to killing that animal, whether for revenge or in a preventive act? How I feel is no mystery to anyone, but I've always tended to adhere to my own, 'rogue philosophies', developed independently of any public consensus or conventional thinking. What frankly surprises the hell out of me is how many people have happily shown their support for my philosophy and for my work - they've stepped forward by the thousands. As humbling and affirming as that may be, it speaks to a greater truth that is at the root of what I do, the reason my organization was founded, and the impetus of every form of support lavished upon us: Dogs matter.

Posted on April 7, 2010 | Link

Our Model for a More Effective No-Kill Community

Posted on September 29, 2009 | Link

The Problem with No-Kill:

It's Not Enough

A lot of people and organizations in the animal welfare community have a problem with the no-kill philosophy, and we're no exception here at Olympic Animal Sanctuary. But it's probably not for the same reasons you think, so we urge you to read on.

Let's start with the way a typical animal shelter works. Shelters receive dogs and cats from owners who no longer want them or are unable to continue to care for them, and from Animal Control, who picks up animals that have been abandoned or confiscates them from abusive or neglectful owners. Those animals are placed in small, holding pens where they receive the bare minimum care, usually food, water, something to sleep on, and frequent cleaning and removal of waste from the cage. Stray animals are held for a few days, usually three to five, to give the owners a chance to come in and claim them, while the rest are made available for adoption. Those strays not claimed by their owners are put up for adoption. After a few days to a few weeks, depending on policy, any animals not adopted are killed. Somewhere between 7 and 12 million dogs and cats die this way every year in the US.

Of course, not all animals get a shot at adoption; sick animals that may or may not be treatable are killed. Old animals are often killed. Animals with temperament issues are killed. And sometimes shelter personnel just kill a bunch of animals to make room for more. It's important to note that the shelters call this "euthanasia" which literally means 'good death' -- we don't see much good in it, which is why we call it killing, and reserve the term 'euthanasia' for animals that would die an inevitable, horrible death as a result of illness or injury, or continue to live in agony indefinitely -- mercy killing, as opposed to killing for convenience, or because we simply don't know what else to do with all these animals.

The rules for killing shelter animals are that the death has to be quick, relatively painless, and as stress-free as possible, and most of us take it for granted that this is the case, but often it is not. The people administering the death drugs are usually not veterinarians, they may not give the right dosages, they may not use the right drugs, they may not be able to find a vein, so the animal endures repeated bad injections, or the shelter personnel may prefer easier, less humane methods, like intracardiac injection (needle into the heart) without first anesthetizing the animal. It's illegal in most places, but it is a lot easier.

Here's something to think about: would any of us dispute the idea that certain sadistic, abusive, predatory individuals become foster parents or seek employment at group homes, in schools, or in other places where they will have access to children so that they can have a steady supply of victims? Of course not -- we know this happens, because we hear about it every day. Most of the people in child services are there for the right reasons, but some are there to perpetrate abuse on the vulnerable. The same is true of elderly care, and care of the mentally handicapped. So does it not follow that some people enter the animal welfare field for the purpose of abusing animals? We know it happens, because we've seen it, but chances are you haven't. And since animals can't talk, and unlike child services, killing the animals is considered part of the job, these people's cruelty can go undetected for years. In fact, we've even seen people fired for animal abuse and go right on working at another facility, or even returning to the same facility after a management change!

Moving on, after the animals are killed, they're generally given to an animal disposal company, and in most cases they're taken to a rendering plant where they're chopped up and mixed up in a vat along with road kill, expired grocery store meat, dead animals from factory farms, mink carcasses from fur farms, etc. The contents are boiled, and what floats to the top is sold to pet food manufacturers as "animal fat", while what sinks to the bottom is sold as "meat", "meat byproducts", "protein meal", or other nondescript terms that essentially mean a mixture of dead animals, plastics, polystyrene, narcotics (remember the drugs they used to kill those shelter animals?), and anything else that may have gone into the vat. And we don't want to get sidetracked, but if someone ever needed to dispose of a human body... maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't.

So having read about how shelters function, how could we possibly be against no-kill? The answer is that we're not against the no-kill movement, we just have a problem with one part of it, which we'll get to, after we briefly discuss the movement itself.

The basic principle of no-kill is that no adoptable animal is killed if it is healthy or has a treatable illness or injury. Some shelters operate as no-kill facilities, while in other instances entire communities are no-kill, which is preferable, because when only the shelter is no-kill, the animals they don't have room for are still being killed elsewhere. For a no-kill community to work, there are several elements that need to be in place, and many organizations follow what is referred to as the "no-kill equation". It's not actually an equation, which only means that the people who wrote it, or at least named it, weren't mathematicians. Regardless, here it is:

1. Feral cat TNR program: TNR stands for trap, neuter, and release -- the only method proven to reduce feral cat populations. The neutered cats stay in the area and keep outsiders from moving in, but since they don't reproduce, the population stays within reasonable limits.
2. High volume, low cost spay/neuter: take away people's excuse for not sterilizing their pets -- make it as easy and convenient as possible.
3. Rescue groups: animals transferred to other animal welfare organizations means there's more room for new animals coming in. This requires a form of community that isn't always easy to create, but hopefully it's a reasonable goal.
4. Foster care: get the animals out of the shelter and into a home environment, where they no longer have to endure intensive confinement, exposure to diseases like bordatella (kennel cough) or worse, and where those nasty behaviors they pick up at the shelter don't get the chance to develop.
5. Comprehensive adoption plan: increasing adoptions is key, and making sure the animals go to appropriate homes means they don't end up back in the shelter next year.
6. Pet retention: coming up with ways to keep people and their pets together, which may include helping people understand their animals' behavior better, helping with medical bills, providing emergency assistance, etc.
7. Medical and behavior rehabilitation: treating the sick and injured, and fixing those behavioral issues that would keep an animal from being adopted.
8. Public relations/community involvement: this one is pretty obvious.
9. Volunteers: having a strong volunteer base is crucial, as there is always more work that can be done.
10. Compassionate director: it seems like this one wouldn't need mentioning, but some shelter directors aren't as compassionate as we'd like them to be. Without a compassionate leader, a compassionate community is going to be harder to create.

This all sounds good, but there's one, nagging detail that bothers us; there's one thing still missing. Remember when we said that no-kill organizations and communities don't kill adoptable animals? What about the ones that aren't adoptable? Even if an organization has a rehabilitation program for dogs with behavioral issues, won't there always be some that don't make it to adoption because they just can't get their acts together?

Most organizations use some form of temperament testing to determine whether or not a dog is safe and reliable, terms that are better used for describing a car than a live animal. It's a litigious age we live in, and no one wants to get sued, so shelters use all kinds of methods to ascertain a dog's suitability for home life: shaking a plastic replica of a human hand in the dog's face while it's eating, wiggling a baby doll in front of the dog, walking it past a kennel of barking, growling shelter dogs to see how it reacts. Of course, dogs don't recognize plastic replicas, because they don't view the world the same way we do, so that plastic hand and that baby doll are just toys, and what dog wouldn't bite a toy? And what dog wouldn't get defensive with all those other dogs barking and growling at it? But often, normal behaviors are what keep a dog from passing temperament evaluations, and even when the evaluations have some actual validity, as opposed to the methods just mentioned, some dogs simply aren't going to pass. Fighting dogs, severe abuse cases, coyote hybrids... there's only so much we can ask of these animals, and maybe asking them to change their behaviors so they can go live with the Cleaver family is a bit unrealistic.

So what do you do with a dog that bites strangers, that fights with other dogs, that kills cats, or that will struggle to the point of myopathy, potentially leading to organ failure and death, when you try to put a leash on it? For most organizations, the answer is to 'euthanize' the dog. For us, that's just not good enough.

Olympic Animal Sanctuary was created for precisely these kinds of dogs; sometimes rehabilitation takes years, and sometimes the dog never reaches that place where it can be considered completely safe and reliable. For us, that's OK -- we don't let the cat killers play with cats, we don't leave the fighters alone with other dogs, we don't let strangers, especially children, have access to any of the animals, and for those that won't take a leash, we don't make them -- sure, lugging them to the vet in crates is hard on the lower back, but we do whatever it takes, and we're pretty sure the dogs appreciate the effort. The problem is that we can only do so much -- a few dozen dogs is all we can handle at the moment, and we're turning them away left and right, often requests from no-kill shelters that have run out of options. That tells us that there are an awful lot of dogs that can't make the grade for adoption, and even the no-kill community is killing a lot of animals.

So what do we do? Well, what would you do? Not what would you do if you were in our shoes, but what would you do, you, the person reading this, whatever your name is, if someone said to you, "We have a dog that bites people, we've tried for months to rehabilitate him and he still bites people, we can't find a facility anywhere in the world that will take him, and if you don't take him and keep him for the rest of his life, he dies tomorrow. Here he is; you decide." Well, what's your answer? Do you find a way to give him a life worth living, or does he become low-grade dog food?

At this point you're probably saying to yourself that there's no way you'd take in a dog like that one when there are perfectly well-mannered animals that need homes, too, or maybe you're thinking about things like liability issues, how to keep visitors to your home safe from this dog, what it's like to get bitten by a dog -- a real bite, the kind that bleeds and requires a visit to a doctor... Hey, we know all about that stuff. But we also know that a few special needs dogs in a typical American home aren't that difficult a thing to manage for a lot of people. If you don't have young children, you're patient and flexible, and you don't mind having a dog that you can't take to beach parties or parade around in front of your relatives when they come to visit, maybe you can save this dog. Well, truthfully, he's already dead, but maybe you can save the next one, and leave the easy dogs to the people with the small kids at home, the never-ending stream of visitors, the door that doesn't always latch... But chances are there are still a few things you'll need to make it work. And to save you the trouble of sorting them out yourself, we'll provide you with a list:

• Training: you need to learn from people that have done this before, so you're not dependent on trial and error (those errors can be pretty expensive). You need to understand both normal and abnormal canine behavior, and you need to learn to determine what's acceptable, what needs to change, and what to address first. Do we practice walking on the leash first, or do we work on that biting thing? Should we address the food-guarding now, or should we give her some time to settle in? These are important questions, and there are others that won't be as obvious.
• Community: You need to be in touch with other people doing the same thing as you, to support you, share their experiences, and help you when you run into problems. Sometimes you'll just need to vent, and you'll need someone to listen to you. And what if you need someone to take care of that dog when you want to take a trip? We all need a vacation from time to time, but do we all have a pet sitter that can deal with a dog that eats people?
• Protection: You need liability insurance. For some dogs it's not as crucial, but you need to protect yourself and your dog, and you need to have an affordable policy to do just that.

Let us now reassure you that most of the non-adoptable dogs in the system turn out to be quite sweet; they just need a little time in a safe environment. Can you provide that? We hope so, because our facility is full, and that means dogs are dying because we were their last hope and we had to say no. As far as the training, community, and protection, well, we're working on that. Our goal is to provide the training build the community that you need to take on this challenge, and maybe get you a deal on liability insurance, too. We have a long way to go, but we'll get there. With a community of skilled caregivers out there, we'll be able to focus on only the most extreme cases, while the rest of the dogs get to have a more traditional home environment.

Think you can help? Get in touch with us and we'll talk.

Posted on September 29, 2009 | Link