Monthly Archives: May 2019

A Job to Do

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The laws of New York City permit renters to have guide dogs or service dogs despite no-pet clauses in their leases. And New York City renters with chronic mental illnesses may have emotional assistance animals. (NY Civil Rights Law § 47-b.)

What does this say about our failure to find ways, even in the densest of human communities, to look after each other?

And what does it say about our regard for animals we claim to breed as “a member of the family”?

Ellie Moffat of the Vegan Justice League says:

I have told another vegan, about dogs used as K-9 or seeing-eye dogs, that I think it’s wrong. He said that a dog is happiest who has a job to do. But it must be awful for dogs who sit around all day inside the house in the suburbs waiting for their owner to get home.

Step back and regard the pattern here. We human beings have every sort of justification for breeding domestic animals onto this planet in ever greater numbers. Animals not just to eat, but also to herd the animals we eat, or clear our lawns of geese, or guard us, or amuse us, or lend us emotional assistance. These animals who perform “assistance” roles for us embody the hijacked genetic lineage of the free-living animal communities. The cats and the wolves who once walked over deserts and tundras on their terms.

We’d never personally hunt wolves or undomesticated cats. Shall we, though, agree to the trapping of their wild hearts, trophy-like, into living beings whose purpose is to amuse, guard, or console us?

Ellie continues:

I feel like a service pet has a sad life. I’ve seen service dogs with signs on them that say Do not pet me or Ignore me. I’ve also seen service dogs whose owners couldn’t possibly ever play with them. I live by the Family Court building. When I walk by the K-9 unit cop car, the dog in there is always alone in the parked car viciously barking. Happy dogs don’t act like that.

They don’t.

To the deeper point, animals were not put on this planet to come to our physical or emotional rescue—whether we classify it as crime prevention, services for disabilities, or a broader, often more “happy” companionship role that pets typically serve.

Veganism is offended by support for the concept of service pets. This is clear, given the vegan principle’s opposition to human dominion, of which domestication of the wolves and the forest cats are harrowing examples.

If we’re asked what we think of dogs who perform any specific services, vegans need to offer cogent answers.

And we probably need to think a lot more thinking about how we ourselves can create safety, companionship, and emotional assistance in our human communities.

Banner image: Gabriel Forsberg via Unsplash.

What to Do on Kentucky Derby Day

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We humans excel at making use of other animals, extracting wealth through that use, exhausting them, disposing of them. This week, the 145th Kentucky Derby will showcase these habits.

Frivolous, frenzied pressure surrounds the horse called Omaha Beach, who is dubbed most likely to win. Because the racing industry is all about ROI, this horse and the others will run so hard their lungs bleed. Racetracks use a diuretic called Lasix to stop the horses from bleeding through their noses.

UPDATE: Just three days before the 2019 Kentucky Derby, Omaha Beach was removed from the race, having come down with breathing problems associated with a trapped epiglottis. Inflammation of airway structures can cause a horse’s epiglottis to get stuck in folds of tissue, according to Equus Magazine.

Trainer Richard Mandella calls Omaha Beach “a kind horse. A horse that’s easy to be around.” Evidently we are just sensitive enough to perceive kindness in the other animals—even as we amuse ourselves at their expense. Even as horses continue to die in professional racing. Fatalities include Kentucky Derby horses Barbaro (April 29, 2003 – January 29, 2007) and Eight Belles (February 23, 2005 – May 3, 2008)…

And as long as the horse breeding business exists, so will the auctions and the killer buyers. Tens of thousands of horses, including racehorses, go to slaughter each year. With horse slaughter disallowed in the United States (it stopped in 2006), the unwanted animals just get a longer, more excruciating journey over the Canadian and Mexican borders for a slaughter. Don’t kid yourself about this. That $3 million purse isn’t buying sanctuaries for four-year old horses, either.

The racetrack industry is under scrutiny for drugging horses in the Triple Crown events. HR 1754, the Horse Racing Integrity Act, would create a nationwide standard for testing in racing horses, implemented by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

Churchill Downs, Inc. opposes the Horse Racing Integrity Act. The major animal-advocacy groups back the bill.

Given the temptation to push boundaries to win, the racing industry will keep tormenting horses—drugs or no drugs. If we’d ask serious questions, we’d find no integrity exists in horse racing.

And this Saturday’s Derby would be the last.

This Saturday, let’s all refuse to don bonnets. Let’s decline to stick mint leaves in glasses. Let’s stop making light of this event, making bets on this event, and allowing its realities to go unmentioned. Let’s act upon a baseline of decency, speak up in our social circles, and start treating horse racing as the blood sport it is.