Case 7 of the 2018-2019 NHSEB nationals pool invites us to reflect on pet owners’ responsibilities and on when a shelter dog would be better off left unadopted.
Characters Frankie and Sam have a roughly equal ability (or inability) to care for a pet. While both are dog lovers, neither has much money for veterinary care, the best home, or much time to devote to dog walking or play.
Frankie decides to refrain, while Sam goes ahead and adopts. Frankie’s reasoning is that any dog he might take home would be better off in a shelter where it might be adopted by a better resourced owner or simply euthanized. (Frankie doesn’t explicitly say that a dog would be better off euthanized than living under his care, but that unadopted dogs are often put to sleep is an obvious implication, and therefore must be in play in Frankie’s reasoning.)
Sam’s reasoning is that even though the conditions at his
house aren’t ideal (his landlord forbids pets in the house), his dog is better
off with him than at the shelter.
Analyzing Frankie vs. Sam’s decision, and the implications
for the ethics of pet adoption, could be broken down into two steps. Step 1: determining whether a dog’s
interests are morally valuable.
From the Kantian perspective, dogs lack rationality, and
therefore are not owed direct moral duties. That is, we needn’t treat dogs as ends
in themselves – the standard Kant demands for creatures that do possess
rationality, in light of their ability to self-govern, and obey moral rules for
their own sake.
However, Kant clarified that this doesn’t mean we’re free to
treat non-rational animals any way we please. This is because the way we treat
Fido may influence the way we treat one another. A person who leaves a dog tied
to a stump in their backyard, denying it affection, nutrition and medical care,
may very well come to treat human beings in a similarly callous fashion.
Therefore from Kant’s perspective we have indirect
duties to be good to non-human animals, because the way we treat our pets shapes
the way we treat our neighbors.
From the Utilitarian perspective, our moral obligations to
dogs is direct. Given the fact that their nervous system is relevantly similar
to our own, it’s reasonable to conclude that dogs feel pleasure and pain in the
same way that we do. And since Utilitarianism is all about objectively maximizing
net pleasure over pain, the impact of our actions on our pets’ pleasure/pain is
just as important as the impact on humans’ pleasure/pain.
Further, I believe it was Tomas Regan who made the “center
of a life” argument (in Taking Animals
Seriously) that many animals are relevantly similar to us in that they
constitute a distinct being living a distinct existence. They possess a
distinct consciousness, a past, a future, desires, relationships, emotions –
most of the stuff that would seem to make humans’ welfare worthy of moral
concern. Therefore if we think the interests and welfare of humans is worthy of
moral consideration, we should extend the same to nonhuman animals – both constitute
“centers of a life.”
These three brief arguments don’t mean a dog’s interests
outweigh or are necessarily equal to humans’. But they do mean your intuition
that we can’t treat a dog as if it were a brick can be explained with
argumentation.
Step 2: determining
whether a dog would be better off in a shelter (and possibly euthanized) or
adopted by a loving but under-resourced owner.
Here the answer would seem to turn on just how bad the
conditions at the shelter are, whether it’s a “no-kill” shelter, and just how
unprepared and unfit the owner in question is.
The case states that Sam feels badly that he can’t bring his
dog inside due to his landlord’s restrictions, and that his dog “gets cold and
wet sometimes” as a result. An important question is whether Sam lives in Miami
or Minnesota, as well as whether his dog is a Chow (thick coat) or a Chihuahua
(not so much).
Another is whether Sam’s dog has access to a partially
wooded (shaded) acre with plenty of room to run, or to only a 10×10 concrete
pad. Sam’s dog would also likely appreciate playmates (squirrels to chase or
neighbor dogs to converse with… at 3 a.m.). And dog houses can be conditioned
and comfortable, or glorified cages. Simply saying Sam’s dog is in “the backyard”
doesn’t give us much insight, but these are the sorts of factors that would impact
the dog’s welfare, and in turn the moral permissibility of Sam’s treatment.
Another important consideration is the dog’s age. Much like
humans, sometimes ailments will crop up in adolescent years, but dogs usually require
the most intensive (and expensive) medical care later in life. If Sam’s dog is
between a year and five years old (assuming it’s a breed that usually lives a
decade or more) and has shown no signs of disease, the need for vet care in the
near future may be low. If it’s pushing fifteen, the vet will likely need to be
visited often, and continuous medications for arthritis and other ailments may
be necessary in order for the dog to remain relatively pain-free.
Further, if Sam has good reason to think he’ll be in a
better position financially to care for his dog when he gets older, the risk he’s
taking now that no emergency vet visits will be in order may be a fair gamble. This
gamble is more defensible to the extent that shelter life would be miserable
(some are nice; others pitiful), and to the extent that Sam has reason to think
he’ll have more time for his dog in the near future.
So there ya go. The ethics of adopting a dog on a budget in
two quick steps 🙂 There’s more to analyze, but hopefully this will point you
in the right direction.
The best of luck to all teams competing at UNC this year,
and special encouragement to the teams from Tennessee, DC, LA and Houston (this
one was for you and your crew, Deric – enjoy nationals!).
Matt
