Compassion is the basis of morality, and it is cruelty to people that is breaking and roiling the hearts of so many animal lovers and rotting the soul of the movement that claims to speak for the rights of animals. There is cruelty everywhere in the new hysteria over cruelty to animals, but there is little or no concern for the cruelty and abuse being inflicted on the people who live and work and love animals, even if they cannot always give them perfect lives, even if they cannot always treat them well.
I respect people who choose not to eat the flesh of animals, I do not respect people who at the same time enthusiastically dismantle the lives of people. This is the very meaning of hypocrisy, they are not deserving of respect, they are in need of help themselves.
I think of the animal trainer in Florida, who wrapped herself around the trunk of the elephant she has been living with for five years and sobbed so uncontrollably when she learned the circus is abandoning elephants under pressure from animal rights organizations that a nurse had to come and help calm her down. And I think of the New York Carriage Driver who drives 200 miles each weekend to visit the retired carriage horse who pulled his carriage for so many years, and who he misses every day of his life.
His wife, a recent immigrant from Asia, has lived in terror for years now that her husband will lose his job, and her family will lose their home, and her children will not be able to afford college.
In San Francisco, animal control officers seized the dog of a 71-year-old homeless man and euthanized him, he did not have up-to-date rabies shots. The old man was devastated at the loss of his companion. So was a homeless man living in New York City, secret informers claimed the dog living in his van was unhealthy, the dog was seized and killed, his very devoted owner was never even told. I think of the horse lover in Orange County, Calif., who had to send three of his horses to slaughter because Hollywood studios will no longer use animals in their movies because it has become too troublesome to deal with protesters who believe it is abuse for horses to work in movies.
In Rochester, N.Y., a lonely and disturbed man was living in a trailer with a horse, the horse was seized by authorities, the man is suffering from acute loneliness and depression, no one has come to see him or help him. Two elderly woman in Ohio – sisters – were living with their beloved feral cats, the cats were seized by the animal police, most were euthanized, the sisters are heartbroken and alone, the cats were their purpose in life.
A woman in Vermont kept her ponies in a trailer, police came and seized them and took them away, yet curiously, they were not abused or injured. She seemed to love them quite a bit, and they needed a better place to live, but there was nothing evil about her, she seemed disturbed.
In Glenville, N.Y., a farmer named Joshua Rockwood had his three horses seized after informers called the police about his farm animals, he misses them, it was painful for him to see them hauled away, and he is fighting to get them back. A judge has said there is no evidence the horses were treated cruelly or abused.
Tawni Angel offered pony rides in Santa Monica, Calif. until people who called themselves animal rights activists claimed it was torture and abuse for ponies to give rides to children, and the City Council canceled her contract in the local farmer’s market. She is determined to keep the ponies alive and not send them away to slaughter – something the activists and the City Council was not concerned about.
A woman in Massachusetts named Louise said her neighbor called the police about her birds.
“They did a raid on me and took all my parrots! They said if I didn’t turn them over they would seize them and take my old golden retriever, I couldn’t take that chance with him. My golden is up there in years and so attached to me, he would have died locked up. I miss my parrots so much, my African grey who talked to me and my golden. My golden is depressed, he misses her! I don’t know what happened to them. I think they sold them. They filed a criminal complaint and now I have an arraignment the end of June for cruelty charges, yet when the raid happened they said how healthy and clean my animals are… I am left with panic attacks every time someone comes to the door now, I am always afraid they will come back and take my dog.”
I don’t know this woman and have not seen her birds, I can not speak to their care, but I am struck by the terror in her message and the love and worry in her words. It is a fearful thing to have police come into your home and take your animals away. I would guess she needs some kind of help, we need a better and more mystical way of understanding animals and the people who love them.
Be kind, said Plato, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle. It is sometimes necessary to take an animal away from the people who love them, it is sometimes not. Most of the time, animal cruelty appears to be the result of poverty or mental or physical illness, it is not usually a black-and-white case of good and evil. In many cases, people can be helped to keep their animals, not just arrested. Few people keep animals so they can harm them.
This is the complex thing about compassion. It is easy to be compassionate for people we like, harder for people we don’t like, even though they are in the most need of it. An animal rights movement without compassion for people is broken, both in spirit and moral purpose. That, sadly, is what we are seeing almost every day.
In our zeal to protect animals from abuse and cruelty, we have lost sight of our own humanity. Animals, which have always brought people together and connected them to the natural world, have become a wedge separating people from one another, a means of exploiting our concern over the well-being of animals into yet another way of hating people and harming them thoughtlessly and without compassion. There is something about human nature that loves to judge, and that finds cruelty a natural way to feel.
We are so quick to accuse, judge and condemn people that we rarely pause to see if they can be helped, or if there is any better way to help their animals than haul them away, an experience often cruel and traumatic for all involved. If you are truly concerned about the carriage horses, why not give them bigger stables, or more space in the park, or special traffic lines. If you love the big elephants and worry about them, why not lobby for different travel schedules, new training methods, different and new ways to interact with the public. Why send them off to almost certain death and extinction?
If a farmer is struggle to buy hay for his horses, perhaps he could be helped rather than jailed, so he could keep his horses and the horses could keep their homes. Why couldn’t social workers check on the welfare of dogs and cats of impoverished, even homeless people, if the animals are loved and needed?
It is almost heresy to express any kind of compassion for the people whose animals are seized in growing numbers all over the country. And in many cases – Joshua Rockwood, the New York Carriage Horses, Tawni Angel – those accused are innocent, victims of a new kind of irrational and often vicious inquisition.
We do not help the cause of animals by being so cruel to their people, we do not save animals by driving them from the lives of the every day world, we have lost perspective and humanity when we cannot see that many people who handle elephants love them dearly and care for them well, and are shattered at the prospect of losing them or seeing them go senselessly to slaughter because there is nowhere else to work.
It is not possible to love animals and hate people, it is not humane to show such little compassion and humanity for the people who desperately need animals in their lives, even if they cannot always give them rich and full lives or care for them well. The movement to end animal abuse is becoming a mob action, not an exercise in animal welfare or animal rights. It no longer seems able, if it ever was, to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty, the idea of animal rights no longer has any real connection to the real lives of real animals, or any sure knowledge of them. It has become synonymous with arrogance and the abuse of people.
Animals are not made safer or healthier in our world if we recklessly and without justice target the people who are willing to love them, live with them and work with them. We need a better way to understand animals, to keep them in our world, and to remember that everyone we judge is fighting a harder battle than we are, they deserve our understanding and compassion as well as our anger and righteousness.