Letters to the Editor
PaulBC
Published Letters: 207 Editor's Choice: 24
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Heather Havrilesky is another one
[Read the article: Ellen, the dog bullies and me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow, I can really see why the author sees eye to eye with Ellen DeGeneres on this:
"I thought she was expressing anger and frustration at people who preferred to enforce their rigid policies in a situation that clearly called for flexibility and compassion."
Nonsense. The job of an animal shelter is to get dogs into good homes and protect them from further abuse. A good process, adhered to rigidly, is going to accomplish this. I would not suggest that everyone who works at an animal shelter is doing a good job, but I don't criticize any of them for adhering to policy.
Will flexibility and compassion save some animals that might be hurt by strict policy? Sure. But once you introduce discretion, you hurt a lot more animals. Say that animals are being transferred to friends of friends. Say that paperwork is being omitted, because the prospective adopter just seemed nice or the dog looked like he really wanted to go (that's the compassion angle). Is this an improvement. Is the system really working better? Only the numbers will tell you. My guess is that a rigid policy saves more does on average.
Finally, about the 11 year old dog with cataracts. As Ms. Havrilesky suggests, there are plenty of healthy dogs out there who need homes. Maybe the best dispassionate solution is euthanizing the poor create. That's a topic up for debate. But barring that, what are the shelter employees supposed to do EXCEPT advocate for the animal. Almost everyone who comes there would rather have a healthy, young dog. The number of people looking for a special needs animal is probably dwarfed by the number of such animals available. I applaud the difficult work of these agencies in steering people like Ms. Havrilesky over to dogs they probably don't want. At least it opens up some home for adoption.
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last one: who are the real bullies?
[Read the article: Ellen, the dog bullies and me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A bully is by definition someone who picks on a weaker victim. Who is weaker, some animal shelter in LA nobody ever heard of or Ellen DeGeneres with a nationwide TV audience? Ellen is the one doing the bullying here. The animal shelter is merely doing their job. They cannot by definition "bully" Ellen because even the actions they took, with legitimate legal authority, have come at a cost precisely because of Ellen's greater power. The easiest thing in the world for them would be to let Ellen get away with her contractual violation. Instead, they took the uphill course of treating her like any other person who adopts a dog.
Seriously, when you go into a bank, you don't say "Hey, I'm a nice guy, let me have some money; I'll bring you more back tomorrow." You meet with a "bully" called a loan officer, sign numerous papers, reveal all kinds of private information. You definitely don't transfer the loan to your hairdresser without another contract. And this is all just about mere money, right? Why on earth do you expect people to bend the rules when it comes to living creatures that can feel pain and have a long history of being abused.
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I believe in sacrificing Iggy in the the name of process
[Read the article: Ellen, the dog bullies and me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is probably where I disagree with the author and some huge number of responders. Animals are killed for all kinds of reasons, often cruelly. Having a good process, consistently practiced, will help more animals on average, and the process needs to be upheld even to the point where it results in a euthanasia that might have been avoided by "flexibility and compassion." If a dog makes it into a good home after a process violation, and the process is ignored for that reason, then this opens the floodgates for making any kind of exception at the shelter or adopter's discretion.
Actually, it's possible that "no questions asked" will save more animals on average. I just don't know. It would require a study. But assuming that the current process is good, the fate of Iggy is simply irrelevant. If he stands as an example that the rules are important, then this may help more animals than it hurts.
Note: I do not believe in this kind of raw numeric utilitarianism when applied to human life, but I am willing to accept it for animals.
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my take on this whole discussion
[Read the article: Ellen, the dog bullies and me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All I can conclude is that there are an awful lot of people out there who think things ought to be done on wink and handshake, and that rules can be ignored by "good" people who just "know" that they're right. It's no exaggeration (though many will take it to be) if I say that this is the kind of thinking that got us mired in Iraq.
Rules, laws, contracts, and processes are terrible impersonal things. We tolerate them only because people acting on their own discretion are often even worse. I've seen a long list of horror stories about the treatment of prospective adopters by animal shelters. I'm not going to claim that all of these people are well-meaning or competent. Some of the decisions really do sound arbitrary and amount to an abuse of power of the sort endemic to petty bureaucrats.
But what I want to know is whether you think these people would be better or worse if they were not bound by a process. My money is on worse, much worse. Ellen was burnt by a process, not by an abusive employee. It is her responsibility to know that process. Some things might have been handled better on both sides, but there is no letting Ellen DeGeneres off the hook.