The dogcatcher’s day is over

I was chatting with my five-year-old nephew a week or so ago, and he was telling me all about dogcatchers and the pound, and sounding either like Shirley Thistlewaite over on YesBiscuit! describing the latest horror from some animal control facility out of the dark ages, or a kid who’d just seen “Lady and the Tramp.” (It was the latter.)

So when Jennifer Fearing emailed me a link to some proposed legislation here in California that would change “pound” to “animal shelter” and “destroy” to “humanely euthanize,” my thoughts went something like this: Yes, I know that a lot of places in this country, and here in California, still operate as “pounds,” and what they do to animals, including wildlife, is definitely more “killing” than “euthanizing.”

And yet… there is, I think, something to be said about letting our laws enshrine an ideal, even if we haven’t reached it yet. From my column this morning on SFGate.com:

I live in the real world, where the sunny scenario I painted for (my nephew) about helpful animal control officers and shelters that try to help pets isn’t always the reality. Just yesterday I read about a facility in Ohio that sounds like it came straight out of “Lady and the Tramp.” I wouldn’t dream of calling it a “shelter,” not while they kill homeless pets in a homemade gas chamber despite having been ordered to stop by town officials.

But just as I don’t correct my little nephew when he tells me how Santa Claus can visit every house in the world on a single night, I didn’t hesitate to tell him, not how the world really is for homeless pets, but how it should be.

I don’t do that just because I want him to be happy, however. I do it so he’ll grow up thinking that kind animal control officers and helpful shelters are how it’s supposed to be, and that if he comes across one that’s not like that, it means something’s wrong.

This week, I spoke to three other people who feel the same way, not about my nephew’s perception of animal shelters, but about the way California talks about animals in its laws.

The first of them was state assembly member Nathan Fletcher (R-San Diego), who recently introduced legislation eliminating the term “pound” from the state’s legal vocabulary in favor of “animal shelter.” It would also eliminate the word “destroy” when used to refer to the humane euthanasia of a sick, injured or suffering animal.

“The way we talk about animals has changed dramatically in the last few decades,” he said. “But the California code hasn’t. It was time to modernize it.”

The bill, AB 1279, will go before its first committee hearing later this month.

Fletcher figured that changing the law to recognize how people feel about animals was the least he could do for his own dogs, a Labrador retriever named Jagger and a Vizsla named Rez, whom he adopted from a San Diego rescue group.

“You know what they say,” he told me, laughing. “If you want a friend in politics, get a dog.”

Fletcher got the idea for the legislation from Dr. Mark Goldstein, a veterinarian and president of the San Diego Humane Society and SPCA. Goldstein is passionate about the change, believing it not only reflects a transformation that’s already occurred in the way we talk about animals, but will help drive positive change in the animal welfare movement.

“When we say that we care about animals as a society, and then there’s a state law that talks about ‘destroying’ them?” he said. “We ‘destroy’ inanimate objects, we don’t destroy life. You destroy an old car, or a piece of trash, not a living being.”

Goldstein feels the same way about the word “pound,” likening it to a jail, and saying it carries an implication of something being done on the cheap.

“It’s hard when you’re going to donors, or to elected officials in a municipality, and asking for resources to help animals, and they analogize you to a jail,” he said. “And it doesn’t help get more resources if they think you’re using them to ‘destroy’ animals.”

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