Letters to the Editor
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Maybe Rush Limbaugh types are right --
-- maybe a little regulatory power does inevitably turn well-meaning do-gooders into self-righteous Nazis. Letters on this site and others seem to prove that this happens in animal-rescue shelters almost everywhere. Chicago, too, I can say from a personal experience with which I shall not bore you.
This is not about only dogs and cats. Recall the GOP chestnuts, real and imagined, about overzealous guardians of proper parenting methods or OSHA rules, about the ruthless invasions by the "jackbooted thugs" of the IRS, or about cops who give you speeding tickets as you rush someone to the hospital. These horror stories about animal shelters simply show that liberals resent petty power just as much as conservatives do, if you push the right buttons.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Petty power corrupts pettily. I don't have a clue about how to cure it.
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Different Expectations
I believe the real lesson here is that you shouldn't adopt your puppy from 'Peter Singer's "Dogs are People Too" Health Spa and Orphanage' if you aren't walking in there with the assumption that you're adopting a furry, four-legged human being.
Okay, that was unfair. But it does seem that, say, Heather and the rescue shelters she visited had some very different assumptions about what it means to be a pet owner. On the one hand, you have people to whom pets are, well, pets. I have two cats and, while I love them dearly, they are, as I've been known to say, 'just cats'; I don't feel guilty about swatting their furry backsides when they tear up my sofa or tossing them outside when they've decided that 2:00 in the morning is a good time to go charging around the house. And then there are people with a more protective stance: they're not just animals, they're almost little children who have to be kept safe from all possible harm and discomfort. Or at least that's the the impression that I get from the stringency with which some of these shelters vet prospective adopters.
Now, while I do think that the latter group is a bit loopy, I can't judge them too harshly, nor do I have anything against their running their shelters as they see fit. I can see how that kind of protectiveness can develop when you've cared for scads of brutally abused animals after rescuing them from their twat owners. It's pretty easy to start seeing everyone who doesn't meet a certain standard (yours) as potentially or just flat-out abusive. Still, a little tact might be appreciated. It tends to rankle a bit when you're told that you can't adopt an animal because you're inhumane monster who shouldn't be allowed within thirty feet of a dog or cat.
Point is, those of us not willing to have our lives scrutinized prior to adopting a dog or cat shouldn't necessarily expect a warm welcome at these shelters. Operating on different wavelengths and all that.
As for Ellen DeGeneres, she did break her contract with the adoption agency. It still would have been nice, though, if the situation could have been resolved without going straight to confiscating the dog. Rigid legalism (redundant?) isn't always the best policy.
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Such a good piece
I think this piece is marvelous, and I entirely agree. The shelter has been appallingly self-righteous and idiotic about this entire thing.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the contract Ellen signed. The issue isn't whether or not the shelter had the right under the contract to remove the dog. The only thing the contract does is confer a legal right. It has nothing to do with doing the right thing. The fact that removing the dog wasn't prohibited by law -- and, in fact, was specifically contemplated by the contract -- doesn't make it the right thing to do. The entire legal and contract system relies, in fact, on the application of human judgment and fairness to situations, and without that layer on top of the legal system, it basically has no meaning and doesn't work well at all. If we all pressed every legal right we have to its limit, the world would turn hostile, cold, nasty, and mean -- just like this situation did.
The shelter had the legal right to remove the dog and the legal right NOT to remove the dog. It had two fully legal options. There was no requirement whatsoever that it remove the dog. The idea that Ellen is asking for an exception to some requirement because she's famous reflects a total lack of appreciation for the actual facts of the situation, because she's never suggested even once that she thinks the "rules" shouldn't apply to her because she's famous. She believes that the agency should have looked at a dog who was in a perfectly good home (eleven- and twelve-year-old kids are too young to be appropriate company for a dog? That's just plain goddamn ridiculous, and everyone who's ever owned a pet knows it) and concluded that there was no earthly reason to remove the dog from the home and traumatize both the dog and the family.
The fact that this odious, self-important shelter operator has been bragging all week about how she's standing up to Ellen DeGeneres is only additional proof that she never gave a damn about the dog in the first place. She's in this to prove, as Heather says, a point about herself and her shelter and how noble and important her work is.
For some people who work very hard in circumstances they consider thankless, it's extremely difficult to admit that sometimes, the world can turn without them. Sometimes, other people are capable of finding a good home for an animal without their help. Ellen couldn't keep the dog; she did just fine on her own finding a great family to care for it. The shelter was cut out of the equation and was not necessary in that situation, and that's why the director is so mad. How dare someone presume to usurp her "expertise" in placing dogs in the right homes?
While we're on the subject, if she's so infallible in placing dogs with the right people, why did she get it wrong in placing the dog with Ellen in the first place? Why did the dog not work out in Ellen's home if the shelter is so perfectly wise in decreeing who should get a dog and who shouldn't? You know why? Because it's just like William Goldman said about Hollywood: nobody knows anything. That shelter doesn't know how a particular dog in a particular home is going to work out. They're guessing, and trying to play God in a situation like that is overkill, in addition to being the height of hubris.
The shelter director here undoubtedly does great work sheltering and caring for animals, and the way she pays herself back for her selflessness and hard work is by bossing people around and convincing herself that her moral superiority is such that she has the right to sit in judgment of others. She believes that she is so sacrificing that this is her reward, and anyone who questions her judgment devalues her sacrifice. She's just wrong. She did the wrong thing.
If anyone here is a bully, it's the shelter lady, not Ellen. Feeling holier than everyone else for grabbing away an eleven-year-old's dog? Slow clap, lady. Slow clap. Way to go.