AMERICANS ATTITUDE TOWARDS THIER PETS
Why People Care More About Pets Than Other Humans
Newspaper editors tell me animal abuse stories often get more responses from
readers than articles about violence against humans. Do Americans really care
more about pets that people?
GETTY IMAGES
WE LOVE OUR
pets. Two thirds of Americans live with an animal, and
according to a 2011 Harris poll, 90 percent of pet owners think of their dogs and
cats as members of the family. These relationships have benefits. For example, in a
survey by the American Animal Hospital Association, 40 percent of married female
dog owners reported they received more emotional support from their pet than from
their husband or their kids. The pet products industry calls this “the humanization
of pets.” One of my colleagues recently spent $12,000 on cancer treatments for her
best friend Asha, a Labrador retriever.
Hal Herzog is Professor of Psychology of at Western
Carolina University and
author of
Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard To Think
Straight About Animals
. He writes the blog "Animals and Us" for
Psychology
Today
magazine.
Newspaper editors tell me stories about animal abuse often generate more responses
from upset readers than articles about violence directed toward humans. But do
Americans really care more about pets than people?
Take, for example, police shootings. The FBI claims that about 400 people a year
are killed by police in “justifiable homicides.” The number of incidents in which
cops shoot dogs is very hard to pin down. You sometimes hear the claim that a dog
is shot by a police officer “every 98 minutes.” That’s would be about 5,000 dogs a
year. But Merritt Clifton, editor of Animals 24-7 thinks, based on his analyses of
media reports, that the number of dogs killed each year in “confrontational
incidents” with cops is probably between 300 and 500 – about the same as human
cop shootings.
Because of high profile incidents like the death last
week of Walter Scott in
Charleston, South Carolina, and, of course, the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri, death-by-cop is in the news. But, as is illustrated by two shootings that
took place within 24 hours last year in Idaho, it is not always the case that we value
people over pets.
On July 8, 2014, Jeanetta Riley, pregnant and a mother of two, was killed by police
officers outside a hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho. Riley
reportedly had a history of
drug addiction and alcoholism, and she was drunk, incoherent, and waving a filet
knife at the three police officers who showed up at the hospital. A dashboard video
camera mounted on one of the police cars shows that Riley was at least 10 feet from
the cops when they opened fire. Why the police opted to shoot Riley rather than zap
a 100-pound woman with one of the Tasers they were carrying is unclear. The
officers were subsequently exonerated, no apology was given to Riley’s family, and
the story never made national news until it was recently dredged up by a reporter
from
TheGuardian
.
Fast forward 14 hours and travel 50 miles south to a café in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
where Craig Jones was eating lunch, having locked his dog Arfee in the cab of his
van. Jones had rolled the windows part-way down so the dog would stay cool.
Unfortunately, when the two-year old black Lab mix started barking, someone
called the cops. Officer Dave Kelly caught the call. Kelly later claimed that when
he
approached the van, Arfee (who was initially described as a vicious pit bull)
lunged at him, though the van’s window was mostly rolled up. Kelly put a bullet in
Arfee’s chest.
This time the media did respond. A headline in the New York Daily News
proclaimed “Idaho
Cop Shoots, Kills Adorable Black Lab Named Arfee After
Mistaking Him For Aggressive Pit Bull.” A “Justice For Arfee” Facebook Page was
soon created, and a shadowy organization called “Anonymous”
posted several
ominous videos on YouTube vaguely threatening Coeur d’Alene police officers
with retribution.
Two months later, when a police review board ruled that the
shooting of the dog was unjustified, the citizens of Coeur d’Alene staged a “Justice
for Alfee” rally, demanding that Officer Kelly be fired.
The police department
issued an official apology to Jones who was awarded $80,000 in damages for the
loss of his pet.
