Shelter Pets: A Response To Sarah

Sarah asks: Are we morally obligated to save animals in shelters that have been abused and forgotten about?

The only answer I can think of is to save an animal from an untimely death for nothing done wrong. Of course, "done wrong" is a loose term if you follow Regan's principles, but it is the phrase I will go with here. Animals are left in shelters when an owner can no longer care for a pet or a pet is taken in as a stray or is unwanted. Unless the shelter is a no-kill shelter, the chances of an animal being euthanized is high. Shelters are too crowded and not enough people are adopting these animals.

But with the shelters, there is another overlying problem here. Some owners are lax in breeding prevention and let their pets outside, where it is possible for another animal to become pregnant. This can then create unwanted pets that will eventually be dumped in shelters if there is no one to take them in. Also, as I mentioned in my post on exotic pets, a pet owner will buy a young, cute animal, and grow bored with it, will not be able to care for it, or it will not be cute anymore, etc., and will dump the animal in a shelter.

I have seen circumstances like this where it is not a pet owner's fault. Sometimes an owner is forced to move and if they move into an apartment, there is a chance they will not be able to keep a pet. Also, I saw this on the show Pit Boss that I also mentioned in a previous post. There was a family who had a dog who was half pit bull living on a military base and the father was away on duty. If I am remembering correctly, the military already had a law saying no full pit bulls could be kept on the base, but then another was passed that no pit bull mixes could be on the base either. This was based on breed discrimination alone. The family clearly loved the dog and was broken-hearted. Fortunately for that dog, Mila, the mother in the family called Shorty Rossi who took the dog with him and found her a new home. Unfortunately, not so many pets in Mila's situation are so lucky.

Clearly there needs to be some reform, but should the reform be in the shelters, in the practice of keeping a pet, or the pet industry?

Animal Arguments on the Human Level

In class yesterday, Kim made an excellent point in the case of animal ethics, something to the effect of we wouldn't use humans for experiments, why use animals? (Please correct me if I am wrong, Kim, if you read this.) Dr. Johnson has also used the point many times of saving your own daughter over the neighbor's many times to prove a point, although there have been some variations as of late (your daughter having a hang nail versus the neighbor's daughter drowning). But even in the readings I have noticed a pattern.

Even in our readings, many of the arguments for and against animal ethics have been brought to the human level, the latest being in Brody's piece. So while this post is not very long, it brings up an interesting question: Why is it that the most compelling arguments on either side of animal ethics are often brought to the human level?