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July 19, 2006
Your gun, your dog, or your life!
The post-Hurricane Katrina "lessons" (if that's what they are) seem to be piling up. During the emergency, citizens' guns were confiscated illegally, and they are now having to petition to get them back, and meanwhile state and federal legislation is in the pipeline to stop this sort of abuse from happening again. Losing your gun is bad enough, because without a gun in an emergency, you can find yourself defenseless against any number of things. But another -- perhaps more tragic -- thing that happened to people in New Orleans was that they lost their dogs -- not because they were confiscated officially, but because they either left them behind when they fled for their lives, or else they weren't allowed to take them when they were evacuated. The story about the little boy crying because his dog couldn't accompany his evacuation touched a nerve nationally. For me, so did this article in the Sunday Inquirer, for it raises some very disturbing issues: Sheila Combs lost nearly everything in Hurricane Katrina: her home, her possessions, her job and - what really broke her heart - her 2-year-old mutt, Rocket.Class bias in this instance takes the form of people who had the wherewithal to adopt these animals imagining that they're more saintly than the people who managed to lose them. Not to generalize (as I know some rescue people who aren't like this) but the "rescue" mentality has a strong appeal to people who possess the holier-than-thou form of altruism Ayn Rand used to condemn. They rationalize that because they've got the animal, that they've "saved" it from more than just the Hurricane. They've also saved it from inferior beings. "It's almost entirely a movement of animals from poor blacks to middle-class whites," said Steven Wise, a Florida animal-rights lawyer involved in several custody battles.Don't get me started on that one. I have no problem with letting people spay and neuter their animals, but I have a serious problem with people who'd make me do that, as well as people who'd say this makes me an unfit owner. Cultural misunderstanding? I guess it's fair to say that people who sexually mutilate perfectly healthy dogs and imagine they're superior to people who don't are guilty of a cultural misunderstanding. Might even be understatement. Army Lt. Jay Johnson, who was in Iraq when the hurricane hit, has filed suit against the SPCA of Texas to retrieve his shih tzu, Missy, whom he left with relatives in New Orleans. And Linda Charles, 41, is suing to recover her German shepherd, Precious, from the Humane Society of North Texas.Look, I know this was an emergency, but I also think that if someone is looking for his dog, and someone else has it, the dog is still the owner's property. It might be fair to charge him for the value of the boarding and veterinary care, but the dog does not become someone else's just because someone else has it -- a fact Lousiania law seems to recognize: But under Louisiana law, residents have three years to claim lost property, said Mimi Hunley, a member of the Louisiana Attorney General's Office who is helping mediate pet disputes.Is it really? I certainly think it should be. But there's a huge nationwide movement now called the "guardian campaign" -- the goal of which is, simply, the removal of the designation of animals as property. A "guardian" could be anyone -- including a thief who "decided" that he's be a better "guardian" than someone who was so cruel as to imagine he was the "owner." Wise, who is involved in the Charles and Johnson cases, said it's hard to understand why the animals aren't being turned over.It is not hard for me to understand at all. The people who won't give these dogs back think they're saintly for adopting them, and more time they spend bonding with the animals, the more self-righteous they're liable to become. (I do not doubt that in addition, they sincerely love the animals they've adopted, in a manner not completely unlike an adoptive parent.) The problem is exacerbated, IMO, by animal rights activists, and concepts like "guardianship" for animals. If you think about it, saying an animal is like a person really does make the animal owner who had to leave the pet behind look cruel, for who would leave a child behind? This gives the adoptive guardians moral authority to keep the animals (and in cities which have enacted "guardian" laws, possibly even legal authority). It's a disgrace that people who love their animals so much that they are still trying to get them back are encountering resistance. But it isn't surprising. There is, of course, something worse than losing a gun or losing a dog -- and that is losing your life. In today's Inquirer I see that people in nursing homes may have been deliberately killed because it was too much trouble to save them : NEW ORLEANS - A doctor and two nurses who labored at a sweltering, flooded hospital in Hurricane Katrina's chaotic aftermath were arrested and accused yesterday of murdering four trapped and desperately ill patients with injections of morphine and a sedative.I agree with bioethicist Arthur Caplan's analysis: No one knowswhether that happened in the New Orleans deaths. The worst-case scenario would be if the doctors "tried to save themselves and didn't want to feel guilty leaving the patients behind and killed them," Caplan said.Emergencies present unforeseen opportunities which bring out a latent side of people who find themselves in unusual circumstances. Most of the time, what emerges is the good side -- in many cases people are at their best. Unfortunately, this makes the bad side all the more horrendous to behold. People are justly horrified by opportunists who engage in looting and rioting, but I think a good argument can be made that people who abuse positions of trust are worse. posted by Eric on 07.19.06 at 03:00 PM
Comments
I have to admit my cat of 13 years, was snagged by my mom as a "stray", but had a collar and had been de-clawed. I was away at school when she brought him in. Questioned about whether she had contacted the original owner she seemed oblivious like it was no biggie. I think there's a lot of irrational emotions at work in these situations. Crimes of passion. Still punishable of course. Your web title resonated with me because I'm reading Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" which is like a "Talented Mr Ripley" flavored story set in a group of Classics students with a charismatic teacher who inspires them to live Classically. Since its a novel and they are teens, they focus on recreating a Bacchanalea and to their regret, succeed. Two Dishes · July 21, 2006 08:29 AM I would be interesting in knowing the scope of this problem. The Inquirer article alledge there was some kind of mass transfer of pets from poor to rich, black to white. Thousands of pets were rescued. Houstan SPCA rescured over 11,000 pets after Rita. That some of these rescues were poorly handled is unfortunate but have there been hundreds of pets not returned to their orignal owners or dozens. As for the issue that abuse is relative. Nonsense. I do agree that not neutering is certainly not abuse, but if I found a dog chained to a doghouse without access to food or water, vermin infested, heartworm positive with untreated mange that's abuse whatever the race or socio-economic status of the owner. It sounds like some rescue operations need better procedures but the Inquirer article seemed to make awful broad condemnations based on relatively few examples. Chad Brooks · July 21, 2006 01:31 PM Chad, thousands of pets were adopted. In some cases the owners relinquished their pets, but the vast majority never knew to look online or how to pursue their animal through the system. Can you imagine trying to pick your black cat out of hundreds of poorly done photos of rescued black cats? Our group, the Stealth Volunteers, reunited over 1,000 animals with their families and we did more reunions than any other group. The vast majority of animals went to new homes. I would also say the majority of adopters did the right thing and returned animals when contacted by the owner. However there are over 2 dozen lawsuits now against people who believe in "finders keepers." Marilyn Litt · July 31, 2006 12:21 PM |
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I think a LOT of this stems from people falling in love with the dogs they adopted.
I doubt the people who don't want to give the dogs back are bad people. They just love their dogs so much that their thinking is getting warped and they're believing their own rationalizations.
Dogs are SOOO good at binding with people that the new owners, each and every one probably, probably just can't believe that the dog loved their old owners as much.
And the new owners love the dogs so much that they would NEVER leave the dog behind, so the new owners love the dog more.
And so on and so on. If a dog really does have the kinds of diseases that indicate lack of best-possible care that just adds fuel to the fire. Imagine absolutely loving a new dog, bonding with it, healing it, giving it a wonderful home and delighting in how happy and healthy it is, only to find out the old owner wants it back. Ouch.
I think the old owners DO own the dogs, and the solution is this- if the old owners really don't love the dogs as much as the new owners do, they'll sell the dogs to the new owners. The amount of love and care will translate into dollars and cents. If they aren't willing to sell, or the new owners aren't willing to buy, that's all the evidence necessary to prove the old owners love the dog as much or more.
Problem solved.