Over the years, I’ve gotten thoroughly sick and tired of the repeated use of the myths surrounding pet euthanasia as an argument in favor of providing the same “service” for humans. The latest of these is from a column by Dr. Gifford-Jones (I guess “Dr.” is his or her first name) published in the Edmonton Sun on February 7.
From the column:
Who was Debbie? If you missed her death notice, she was the world’s oldest polar bear at Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo, who died at 41 years of age. Due to a number of strokes, zoo keepers decided Debbie had suffered enough and painlessly ended her life. But unlike the polar bear, a friend of mine recently experienced an agonizing death which has prompted this column.
I’ve often written that if I were allowed a committee to oversee my final hours, I’d want a veterinarian to be part of that group. I’m hoping they would treat me the same way as Debbie, or a loving pet. (emphasis added)
In the column, Gifford-Jones mentions being moved Sara McLachlan’s video to raise funds for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Unfortunately, the SPCA spot really does help Gifford-Jones make a case, because in its emphasis on “rescue,” of abused animals, it avoids telling viewers the ultimate fate of the majority of the animals that end up in shelters. This open letter from a shelter manager paints a very different picture — one that McLachlan would be hard-pressed to provide vocal background for:
Odds are your pet won’t get adopted & how stressful do you think being in a shelter is? Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little longer if the shelter isn’t full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy. If it sniffles, it dies.
Please note that the author is referring to pets that have been abandoned to the shelters by their owners. There’s every reason to believe that pets rescued from abuse have even lower chances of being adopted.
This is not a new phenomenon or limited to one particularly undestaffed and underfunded shelter. Last July, Dick Sobsey posted his own critique of the animal vs. human euthanasia argument in “Euthanasia, pets & people.” Here’s an excerpt, sharing some statistics on animal euthanasia:
- They are abandoned and unwanted. (According to the American Humane Association, “56% of dogs and 71% of cats that enter animal shelters are euthanized,” that was 2.7 million animals in the 1000 shelters who responded to their survey. The total number is likely at least three times as high because another 2500 shelters provided no data.) [Editor’s 2023 note: Newer data is available HERE.]
- They have a personality or behaviour problem. (According to the SPCA, this is the single most common reason for euthanizing dogs accounting for as much as 60% of cases, as many as 6,000,000 in a single year)
- Their caregivers are no longer willing or no longer able able to continue caring for them.
- They are considered to be unattractive.
- They have a treatable health condition but euthanasia is a cheaper alternative.
- They are getting old.
- They have physical traits considered to be undesirable for their breed.
- They have untreatable terminal diseases and are in pain.
- In many cases, there is no single, clear reason.
Please notice that very few of the animals are abandoned or killed because they have painful terminal illnesses.
Note to Gifford-Jones – we kill our pets because we can – the law only requires that we do it humanely and doesn’t really care why we do it.
I can already hear objections from Gifford-Jones and people who have approached this argument in a similar fashion. Thaddeus Mason Pope, whose post on this column alerted me to it, might also object, since he agrees with Gifford-Jones.
After all, one might object, people who abandon their pets to shelters don’t even care enough about their pets to take them to a vet to have them “put to sleep.”
In order to answer those possible objections, I’ll discuss at least one case of a person who did go to a vet to have his pets put down – a story taken from the annals of the euthanasia movement itself.
Then let’s talk about what a great thing it is to treat humans in the same way we treat animals, even the ones we claim to love. –Stephen Drake
So here’s how weird our society is. When lethal injections are given, one of the drugs is what vets used to use on animals. One of the three drugs used in “lethal injections” to kill prisoners on death row in the U.S. has been found to be very painful. (Not for here:Supreme Court went back and forth on the injections and painful.)
I am uncomfortable when we get paired with animals in euthanasia discussions. It was a decade ago ago, that I heard a man, whose name I will not mention, say on a radio show that a healthy animal was of more value than a disabled human.
How much does euthanasia as panacea (to get rid of us, by society)get more popular during financial “hard times”? (historically)
Wow. This is something I’ve often thought about but have not really seen up for public discussion until now. I’ve long been horrified by the way people talk about both pet animals *and* disabled humans, particularly when that talk starts to sidle toward euthanasia. In both cases there tends to be a very cavalier dismissal of the value of the individual’s life, and a lack of questioning of popular assumptions.
Last year one of my partner’s parents’ cats died. He (the cat) had, for at least a year prior to his death, congestive heart failure, tooth problems, and a number of other issues. At one point he also started having seizures. But still, despite being tireder and stiffer than in his younger years, he seemed genuinely happy to be alive. He still came over to humans to be scratched and petted, and he enjoyed his favorite amusements. The day before he died (at home, not on a vet’s table, and not due to any lethal injection) I went and visited him and gave him a good brushing, which was something he always liked. When I found out he died the next day I was of course terribly sad, as I’d gotten to know him quite well on visits — but at the same time, I was really glad that my partner’s mother had refused to cave to pressure to have the cat “put down”. She said that she “just couldn’t do that”. Even though his care needs became a bit more tricky as he got older, nobody saw that as any reason to kill him, and I am very glad of that.
I would not wish disability-related devaluation on anyone, human OR nonhuman.
sanda,
I’ll go you one better. Jack Kevorkian used that same series of injections on Thomas Youk. Given that Kevorkian was a pathologist rather than someone familiar with real living human beings as patients – it’s a pretty good bet he botched the dosages well enough so that Youk wasn’t rendered unconscious by the first injection, but was rendered unable to speak by the second injection – and *fully* able to feel the effects of the final, lethal injection of potassium chloride.
Anne,
Thanks for visiting here. A few years ago, I spent some months mostly lurking on a bulletin board of hospice workers. Several mentioned extending hospice to their pets, avoiding euthanasia.
I am stumped by the lack of public discussion on this as well. Dick Sobsey is one of the only people who has written on the topic.
And yet, you don’t have to dig very far to get at the uglier truth behind the cozy lies about pet euthanasia. Max Bell’s story – in my second post – is a fairly obvious example of the reality of pet euthanasia. And if we’re going to relate pet euthanasia to human euthanasia, we should do so on the basis of the harsh realities rather than the comfortable lies we tell ourselves. –Stephen
Stephen wrote: And if we’re going to relate pet euthanasia to human euthanasia, we should do so on the basis of the harsh realities rather than the comfortable lies we tell ourselves.
YES. And I really very much like the concept of “pet hospice”! I’d never seen it in those terms but that makes a lot of sense.
AnneC,
Sorry about your cat friend.
I had a similar experience to that with your relatives’ cat recently with one of my own animals, an aging guinea pig who had an inoperable illness, directly related to congenital anatomical problems.
The vet pressured me to euthanize him, saying “it wouldn’t be fair to him” if I didn’t.
He had been abused and rejected till late in his life when he came to us, and he was so trusting towards us. I couldn’t just deliver him over to a lethal injection and violate his innocent trust.
I asked her for pain meds and anything else I could use to keep him comfortable at home. And I took him home and kept him comfortable till he grew gradually weaker and died on my lap the next day. Even a few moments before his last breath, he burbled happily when I scratched the top of his head.
The other guinea pigs in his flock (they are very social, emotionally intelligent animals) and his humans (his big pigs) got to say goodbye to him, instead of just having him disappear and never come back.
I have kept vigil with other dying sentient beings, human and animal, and there is something about this sort of dying process that allows the development of a whole life span to complete, something a lethal injection would cut short.
I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ve known people of all faiths and none who recognize and honor the same thing. It’s what the movements for hospice, both human and animal, are all about helping with.