Month: July 2020

Yulin, Yet Again

Despite the global pandemic, despite rumors that the origins of COVID-19 were at a wet market in China, despite the Chinese government’s determination that dogs are pets and not livestock and should not be killed for consumption, the Yulin’s Lychee and Dog Meat Festival is in full force this year. Organizers prepare for this 10-day festival by rounding up – by any means necessary – thousands of dogs and cats and killing them so they can be sold. Animals are stolen from families, pulled off the streets, and purchased from other countries in order to satisfy the demand during the festival.

Although it has been reported across multiple news agencies that organizers claim the animals are killed humanely, activists have refuted that, providing footage of dogs being boiled and skinned alive (among other unimaginable atrocities). According to multiple sources, the Chinese believe that a tortured animal produces more tender (and better-tasting) meat.

The following video is short, but there are some disturbing and graphic images, so please use caution if you decide to view.

Eating dog meat is not exclusive to the festival; in fact, the dog meat trade, which also includes cats, is an industry in several Asian countries. Although the existence of “dog meat farms” is contested, there is no doubt that the animals are stolen and often transported long distances. They are brutalized, crammed into cages, limbs sometimes broken, beaten, and must endure unimaginable suffering before a tortuous death.

https://www.animalsasia.org/us/our-work/cat-and-dog-welfare/facts-about-dog-meat-trade.html

What, some people ask, is the difference between killing a cow and killing a dog? Between the barbarity of the farming industry in the US and that of the dog meat trade in Asia? Aren’t we being hypocritical when we denounce another cultural’s practice that causes the same kind of immeasurable suffering that one of ours does?

I think so. But the people who aren’t able to recognize the suffering farm animals endure – or see it as just another product of Western culture – remind us that dogs and cats are domesticated and share their lives with us in ways that cows and pigs don’t. Meat-eating and whatever it takes to get the food on the table is as deeply ingrained as is dog meat consumption in Asia.

Those of us who understand in a deep way that suffering is a universal experience have the responsibility to do whatever we can to educate others and to look for solutions that will alleviate the pain of that suffering for individuals.

What can you do? Any action is a step forward, no matter how small. Write, talk to your friends about the impact of their behavior on animals, sign petitions, support films made to educate the public about animal welfare, teach your children to be kind and compassionate to animals. Anything you can do is worth your effort and will elevate the lives of animals all over the world.

A Life for an Iris

It was my nephew’s birthday and my mom and niece were visiting on the back deck; well, to be more precise, they were hanging over the back deck and pointing at something out of view. After several minutes, I finally went out and asked what was so interesting. Then I saw it; a squirrel was caught in a humane trap just below the deck. As mom explained, a neighbor had set it for the chipmunks.

My mom’s neighbors have a lovely if not simple backyard. The colorful perimeter is peppered with orange day lilies, patches of yellow and white daisies, milkweed for the monarchs, a magnolia tree, budding rose of sharon, and a whole host of other flowers in bloom I couldn’t identify. In the center of the yard is one of three bird feeders and a bird house that peak out from a trellis full of some sort of ivy. I’d seen deer in the yard many times, and they had more birds than my mom did.

I wasn’t clear why we were just standing there, watching the squirrel pace and throw itself against the trap. I went down and opened it part of the way when the neighbor came running to pull the release and the squirrel escaped under a nearby bush. The neighbor came out and, as we chatted about milkweed and bumblebees and monarch butterflies, I learned that he used the trap to capture chipmunks. What, I asked did he do with them when he caught them. “Bucket of water,” he said with a shrug and a slight grin.

Shit. It was unexpected. I figured anyone who planted milkweed for butterflies and bumblebees and fed birds year-round surely wasn’t using a Havahart® trap for anything other than the humane trapping and releasing of animals.

“You know,” he said, “releasing an animal somewhere else would be illegal.”

He was right. In most places, it is illegal to trap an animal then remove it to another location. It was also cruel. Like taking grandma out of the home she’s lived in all her life and moving her across the country, away from all family and friends.

He went on with a patronizing shrug, saying that he knew they were cute – the deer were cute when they were little and chipmunks certainly were cute – but they ate his bushes. They destroyed his plants and his trees.

I didn’t say what I was thinking, only because this man is my mom’s friend and one of the only people she sees these days on any sort of regular basis. But I did express my extreme displeasure and disengaged from the conversation immediately.

I’m pretty sure the Havahart® inventors did not expect consumers to capture animals humanely in their trap, only to be drowned when removed. Even to save the life of the greenery in the yard. Unfortunately, this do-anything-to-save-what-is-mine or let-nothing-stand-in-the-way-of-what-I-think-makes-me-happy attitude is a deeply ingrained one in our species. It requires constant and mindful attention to our own thoughts and biases and a willingness to make change.

Choosing Euthanasia

On 13. June 2020, my beautiful 17-year-old tabby, ‘rissa, died after a long bout with what my vet finally came to believe was a nasal or frontal mass. For two years, she had repeated respiratory infections with sneezing and coughing, as well as occasional breathing issues; we treated her with steroids and antibiotics and hot steam showers and wet, warm compresses. Her symptoms eased after each treatment and she continued to eat, drink, eliminate, and play until maybe 3 or 4 months before her death.

At that point, I began to notice swelling at the bridge of her nose and, later, at her forehead. It came and went and came again, with steroids helping each time. But as the days wore on, she gradually stopped eating most of her food, no longer played and, in the last week, demonstrated severe weakness in her hind legs.

That night, the 13th, she had been lying around all day, as she had in the past week. We were getting ready for bed and she got down off the couch, peed on the floor, and just plopped down, seemingly exhausted and unable to go on. I’d seen her plop down like that a few times, but this time was measurably different.

I’d been thinking for a long while about how I would manage things when one of my girls could no longer function without noticeable suffering. My other cat, Silk, is 11 and has lymphoma; my concerns started more than a year ago with her and, while I never suspected ‘rissa would leave me first, I couldn’t help but consider possibilities for her as well.

I’ve never accepted euthanasia in the same way so many do today. I’ve never been able to get my head around the idea that when we euthanize, we are killing. We are stopping a heartbeat forever. Not only are we taking a life with euthanasia, with animals we are doing it without their consent. I ask myself all the questions I think everyone should be trying to understand: do they know? are they scared? do they wish they could stand up and yell at me to stop? are they truly suffering to the extent it appears? is this going to hurt them? I ask because, no matter how much people claim to understand about dying, nobody truly knows.

I think we rely too heavily on the idea that we can simply eliminate a part of a problem to solve the bigger one. Even those who are reportedly working for animal rights and care aren’t immune; organizations like PETA, which does fantastic work with/for farmed animals, has a long history of killing pets, oftentimes without any reasonable justification and sometimes completely outside of their rights to do so. People seek out vets to euthanize animals that are sick and too expensive or sometimes simply because they don’t want to care for them anymore. And many vets capitulate. It is unconscionable to me. Euthanasia is an acceptable end for animals in our society and its acceptance likely contributes to the way a great many people view their place as “less than” humans.

I made the decision for my girl that night and she died in my arms. It seemed to be a peaceful passing; one minute she was there, she was breathing, her heart was beating rapidly, I could feel the tautness in her muscles, and the next she wasn’t. She lay there, eyes open and head floppy, and she was just gone. I still don’t know if I did the right thing. I still wonder what that was like for her and I still sometimes worry that I did it because *I* couldn’t bear her suffering anymore. I believe she is at peace now, but it doesn’t relieve the worry that I put her through more than she deserved.

Silk is sitting with me as I write tonight, and I know she won’t be with me forever. I stopped chemo recently, because it was making her deathly ill, and will try a more natural approach to control her symptoms. I am dreading the day when living becomes too much for her. I can only rest in knowing that she and ‘rissa both have had a life filled with a love and any decisions I make are made in that same heart-centered space.

Killing to Alleviate Suffering

The following post was published on Medium on February 3, 2020. I will be following it up here (where I will do all of my animal advocacy writing from now on) with a different (sort of) perspective on euthanasia.

I hate the term euthanasia. Loaded with heavy, ugly baggage, it conjures up for me images of kill shelters that destroy animals indiscriminately and pet parents who send their dogs or cats off to the vet to be killed because they were too needy or too expensive or they just didn’t want them anymore. Yes, killed. Please don’t misunderstand. I believe there comes a time when sometimes it is the only thing we can do to relieve an animal companion’s suffering. But I also believe we often overstep that “right” — often as a means of self-preservation, in the guise of “what’s best for her.” And, in fact, there is just no way to get around that we are killing our beloved companions; they are not just dying. We are taking life from them.

When we talk about death, we often do it in terms that sanitize the process. A person has “passed on” or “gone to Heaven” or “bought the farm” or “transitioned.” Although we may believe what the terms we use imply — I prefer the latter term as, in death, we are transitioning out of this life and into an unknown — we still can’t seem to get our heads around the idea that at the end of this life, we will be no more. Regardless of our beliefs, there can be no argument that we are gone from the world as we know it. We won’t go out with friends anymore, cook dinner, watch television, or have long intimate conversations (and more) with our lovers. Despite what many think, we don’t know where we will go or be or if, maybe, we just disappear into the nothingness.

Nobody wants to just disappear, to no longer be a part of the world. You and I don’t want to be thrust into a dark and empty (why must it always be dark and empty? Why not a beautiful forest with tall and protective trees and lots of chatty birds?) place, alone and without the people and animals we love so we, as humans, create these places where we will live on, in one form or another.

We do the same thing for our animal companions. The difference is that we are making a decision to end their lives based on presumed knowledge. We actually don’t know for a certainty, that they want to die. What we do know is that we don’t want to see them suffer. Many times, we don’t truly make the decision for them, but rather for how we are feeling about their illness or injury. We “don’t want to see them suffer” is a common phrase I hear which says volumes about how we make these end-of-life decisions. We don’t like to sit with their suffering, or what we perceive to be their suffering. And, in this culture, suffering is to be avoided at all cost.

I heard someone say that euthanasia is a “beautiful” process. I’ve been in that position where I’ve had to make a decision about a pet, sat with her while the vet injected the drug that would (literally) per her to sleep before she died, watch my family slip away. It wasn’t beautiful. It was heart-wrenching. She was no more. And I didn’t actually know if I had eliminated her suffering or made it worse. But in the end, it was apparent that I’d been complicit in her killing.

I think natural death is a beautiful process. Slipping away, dissolving into the surrounding energy, as we are meant to do. I’m aware that we all have different views of what happens at/after death; it is that knowledge that gives me pause when considering euthanasia. What if, by killing a pet, we are plunging them into a deeper and darker suffering? Does the suffering they experience while alive serve a purpose? Am I truly doing it for them or to alleviate the pain and anxiety I feel, watching them decline?

There is no one answer that serves everyone. As humans, we will follow our beliefs no matter where they take us. But I would hope that, as guardians of those who are family, we would use the opportunity when the time comes to think seriously and critically about why we are making the decision we are.

And I would hope that, regardless of those personal beliefs, we can respect those of others and help them through the grief process without judgment.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started