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:

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.
High volume, low cost spay/neuter: take away people's excuse for not sterilizing their pets -- make it as easy and convenient as possible.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Medical and behavior rehabilitation: treating the sick and injured, and fixing those behavioral issues that would keep an animal from being adopted.
Public relations/community involvement: this one is pretty obvious.
Volunteers: having a strong volunteer base is crucial, as there is always more work that can be done.
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