![]() ![]() And because abuse and neglect primarily occur in the privacy of the home, there’s little accountability for it. (Almost one-fifth of pet owners surveyed late last year said they were considering giving up their pets due to cost amid high inflation, which is generally not an option for other “family members.”)Īll this is possible because, unlike children, pets aren’t really family members - they’re property without legal rights and few laws to protect them. (In 2016, about one-fifth of dog owners and half of cat owners didn’t bring their animal in for routine or preventive care, which is highly recommended.)Īdd to the bill lack of exercise and socialization, boredom, and even abandonment. To Pierce, even well-meaning pet owners may have a lot to answer for: punitive training, prolonged captivity and extreme confinement, mutilations (declawing, ear and tail docking), outdoor tethering, lack of autonomy, verbal abuse, monotonous and unhealthy diets, lack of grooming, and inadequate veterinary care. Pierce wants to show people like me the shadows beneath the sunny narrative of pet ownership, things like physical abuse, animal hoarding, puppy mills, dog fighting, and bestiality.īut beyond such extremes, Pierce’s work aims to direct our gaze to where more subtle, but far more common, forms of everyday neglect and cruelty lie. That led me to read the stirring 2016 book Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets by author and bioethicist Jessica Pierce. But recently I’ve begun to wonder if she’s a lot more bored and frustrated than I previously thought. Kenny Torrella/Vox Amruza BirdieĮvvie instantly added so much to our lives, and for a while, I assumed our relationship was reciprocal and that she gets just as much from our bond as I do. (Evvie was young and full of energy, and I had just started at Vox.) Nine-month-old Evvie being cute at home and at the beach. My partner and I took her home the day we met her, but only after hours of deliberation over whether I felt I had the time and energy to give her the life she deserved. In the middle of 2020, she was picked up as a stray puppy in Greenville, North Carolina, before being passed through several foster homes. There’s plenty of all that in my household, thanks to my sweet and spunky rescued pit bull mix, Evvie, one of many animals I’ve lived with during my lifetime. ![]() It all reinforces the inherent goodness of the ancient human-animal bond, and lets us believe that where there are pets - whom most owners consider to be family members - there is joy, love, play, and hope. ![]() The internet is awash in this feel-good content starring some of the 250 million animals - nearly one for every person - who populate American households. It’s the act of swiping through an endless feed of Instagram reels featuring resilient three-legged rescue dogs hiking in the woods, feisty yet charming shop cats, and the occasional potbellied pet pig splashing around in a kiddie pool. Some days, when the doomscrolling becomes too much, I switch up my social media consumption to something I call petscrolling. ![]()
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