Just a Dog: Understanding Animal Cruelty and Ourselves

Just a Dog In the series Animals, Culture, and Society, edited by Arnold Arluke and Clinton R. Sanders Just a Dog Understanding Animal Cruelty and Ourselves ARNOLD ARLUKE T EMPLE U NIVERSITY P RESS Philadelphia Temple University Press 1601 North Broad Street Philadelphia PA 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2006 by Temple University All rights reserved Published 2006 Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arluke, Arnold. Just a dog : understanding animal cruelty and ourselves / Arnold Arluke. p. cm. — (Animals, culture, and society) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-59213-471-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-59213-472-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Animal welfare. 2. Animal rights. 3. Human-animal relationship—Psychological aspects. I. Title. II. Series. HV4708.A756 2006 179'.3—dc22 2005055935 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Just a Dog 1 One Agents: Feigning Authority 21 Two Adolescents: Appropriating Adulthood 55 Three Hoarders: Shoring Up Self 85 Four Shelter Workers: Finding Authenticity 115 Five Marketers: Celebrating Community 147 Conclusion: Cruelty Is Good to Think 183 References 205 Index 217 v Acknowledgments THE GERALDINE R. DODGE FOUNDATION and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA) paved the way for my research on animal cruelty. In what has now become a land- mark study (Arluke et al. 1999), the foundation and MSPCA enabled me to study the presumed “link” between animal cruelty and subsequent violent crimes toward humans. Findings from this study have been both controversial and important; they have been used in several states to upgrade the seriousness of animal cruelty to the status of a felony crime. At the end of this project I met with Scott McVay, then director of the Dodge Foundation, to talk about future research on animal cruelty. I could see that cruelty has many different meanings in our society and for each meaning, potentially unique uses for those encountering it. We see ourselves many ways in the face of cruelty. After I explained that researchers had failed to unearth the meanings and consequences of animal abuse and neglect, he encouraged me to write a book taking this fresh approach. I was excited by the scope of the idea but felt more research had to be done before I could start such an ambitious project. Several organizations allowed me to take these steps. The MSPCA’s President’s Fund made it possible for me to study how humane agents investigate and prosecute abuse cases. The Edith Goode Trust and the San Francisco Society for the Protection of Animals allowed me to explore the controversy over killing animals in the shelter community and the role that cruelty plays in this debate. The Northeastern Univer- sity Research and Scholarship Development Fund supported my inves- tigation of animal hoarding as a form of cruelty. Finally, the Kenneth A. Scott Charitable Trust, a KeyBank Trust, enabled me to combine these separate studies into this book. I thank many for their help. Friends and colleagues, including Spencer Cahill, Nakeisha Cody, Fred Hafferty, Hal Herzog, Alan Klein, Carter Luke, Trish Morris, Gary Patronek, Andrew Rowan, and Clint Sanders, offered guidance along the way. Members of the Hoarding of vii viii Acknowledgments Animals Research Consortium and Maria Vaca-Guzman shared their thinking about this form of extreme neglect. Jan Holmquist and the MSPCA provided the cover photo. More than two hundred people whose lives were entangled with animal cruelty allowed me to observe and interview them. At Temple University Press, Janet Francendese backed my original idea for this book and offered good advice as the project evolved, Jennifer French guided the book through the produc- tion process, and Gary Kramer created a prepublication copy. Debby Smith provided fine editorial comments. And finally, Lauren Rolfe supported and encouraged me through it all. Portions of this book are adapted from previous publications: Arnold Arluke, Brute Force: Animal Police and the Challenge of Cruelty (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004), with permission of Purdue University Press; Arnold Arluke, “Animal Abuse as Dirty Play,” Symbolic Interaction 25 (2002): 405–30, © 2002 by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, with permission of the University of California Press; and Arnold Arluke, “The No-Kill Controversy: Manifest and Latent Sources of Tension,” in D. Salem and A. Rowan, eds., The State of the Animals, 67–84 (Washington, DC: The HSUS, 2003), with permission of the Humane Society of the United States. Introduction Just a Dog The judge summarily dismissed the egregious case of animal cruelty against Willa, despite strong evidence that the dog was hideously beaten with base- ball bats. People standing near the bench heard the judge glibly mumbling, “It’s just a dog . .” as he moved on to a “more important case,” a liquor store “B & E.” The humane law enforcement agents who prosecuted Willa’s case felt a surge of anger and frustration, seeing their effort go nowhere. The abusers disappeared quickly from the courtroom, still puzzled about why such a “big stink” was made over a dog. At the local humane society, the staff soon got the disappointing news that Willa’s abusers walked away scot-free but found much to celebrate that made them feel good about their work—the dog’s abusers at least had their day in court, a dedicated and highly skilled veteri- nary staff saved Willa from death, and an employee adopted her. —Author’s field notes, June 1996 I OBSERVED THE ANIMAL CRUELTY case against Willa in court and overheard disappointed humane agents, who had hoped for a different result, retell the events days later. Two youths brutally beat the dog after accepting the owner’s offer of a few dollars to kill her because she urinated in his house. As the beating went on, an off-duty police offi- cer drove by and intervened. Although it seemed as strong as any such case could be, it was dismissed. Like many other cruelty incidents pre- sented before judges, the victim’s advocates were let down and the defendants were relieved (Arluke and Luke 1997). As a sociologist I was more concerned about the process that led up to the dismissal than the outcome itself. To study this process, I asked what the case meant to those present, as it unfolded in the courtroom, and I found that it had many different and conflicting meanings to the humane agents, the defendants, the humane society staff, and the reporters. For the humane agents, the case represented their best investigative work and had the potential to validate their mission, if a guilty verdict were won. They felt their case was solid—the victim was a dog with 1 2 Introduction severe and telling injuries, there was a reliable witness, and the abusers had no defense. However, the judge’s actions made the agents feel dismissed if not belittled, reminding them that many people do not see them as “real” police because they “only” protect animals. To the abusers, it made no sense that people were so upset about their treat- ment of Willa, since it was only a dog and it was their animal. What was done to the dog, while undeniably violent, they saw as a form of play— akin to using racial epithets—that is understood to be inappropriate and offensive but far short of constituting serious crime. And for the staff from the local humane organization, Willa was an almost ideal cruelty case that could be used for promotion and fund raising. Although she was not quite appealing enough to get her picture on envelopes solic- iting donations, the extraordinary efforts of the humane agents and vet- erinarians to bring the abusers to justice and save Willa’s life, along with her in-house adoption by a popular employee of the humane society, gave staff members many reasons to feel proud about their work and unified in their mission to help animals. That animal cruelty affects people is an old idea. As early as the sev- enteenth century, the philosopher John Locke (1693) suggested that harming animals has a destructive effect on those who inflict it. In later centuries, the psychologist Anna Freud (1981) and the anthropologist Margaret Mead (1964) argued that cruelty can be a symptom of char- acter disorder. Children or adolescents who harmed animals were thought to be on a path to future violence because these acts desensi- tized them or tripped an underlying predisposition to aggression. Once their destructive impulses were released, the floodgates restricting violence opened and their future targets were likely to be human, or so it was argued. When studies were undertaken to verify what is now known as the “link,” results were mixed and sometimes misinterpreted to support this idea. Researchers had a hard time proving, for example, that Mac- donald’s (1961) “triad”—animal abuse, in combination with fire setting and bedwetting—leads to further violence. Macdonald (1968) himself failed to establish that violent psychiatric patients were significantly more likely than nonviolent psychiatric patients to abuse animals. In subsequent research, the evidence has been less than compelling (see Levin and Fox 1985), raising doubts about the validity of the link. For every study that purports to find a significant association between Introduction 3 cruelty to animals and the impulse to violence (e.g., Felthous 1980; Felthous and Yudowitz 1977; Kellert and Felthous 1985), there is another study that finds no link (e.g., Arluke et al.

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