JAKE'S HAPPY ENDING
Plan might hurt minorities most, say Mary J. Shariff and Brandon Trask.
Jake, a Newfoundland mix, made headlines last month when he was found emaciated and with a chain collar embedded in his neck. Thanks to Ottawa Humane Society staff like Dominique Lalonde, he has made a full recovery.
Dr. Shelley Hutchings has been a vet for 18 years. Even she was shocked when she saw a dog brought to the Ottawa Humane Society on the night of Jan. 10 with a chain collar embedded in his neck.
The emaciated Newfoundland mix had been picked up by bylaw officers on a rural road near Dunrobin after a stray was reported. There was the metal chain that had cut into the dog's neck. The skin had grown over top, leaving two ends of the chain dangling from each side.
“I have to say I've seen a lot in my career, but I've never seen anything quite like that,” said Hutchings, chief veterinarian at the Ottawa Humane Society. “It was shocking. It was sad. It was a hard day.”
The dog's neck was heavily infected and oozing. His coat was matted and dirty, and he was vomiting. It appeared he had survived by scavenging corn from farmers' fields. A dog with his frame should have weighed 45 kilograms. This dog weighed only 32 kilograms.
“He was in a terrible, sad state,” Hutchings said.
She had the dog X-rayed and prepped for surgery. She made an incision to get to the chain, which was buried at least two centimetres under the dog 's skin for a length of about 15 centimetres around the back of his neck.
Hutchings had to dig down to remove unhealthy tissue. The area was stitched back up with a drain in place to keep fluids from pooling in the surgery site.
Humane society staff named the dog Jake. How he came to have a chain embedded in his neck is still a mystery. There was no tag or microchip, or anything else that would link Jake to an owner.
Embedded collars sometimes happen if a collar is not loosened as an animal grows. Most of the time, a pet's owner adjusts a collar as the pet grows. If a collar is not adjusted, it can become embedded over time, Hutchings said.
“We're left to wonder if he was wandering around for a long time.
It would take some time to get to that body condition and for the collar to be embedded that deep,” she said.
“It was possible he was stray for a long time.”
Hutchings estimates Jake is about a year-and-a-half old. He is playful and curious, and loves playing in the snow. He's on a supervised diet to gain weight and taking puppy training “to learn some manners.”
Despite his condition and low body weight when he was found, Jake has rebounded and there have been no medical complications. His neck area has healed nicely, Hutchings said.
Do an internet search and it's not hard to find gruesome photos of animals with badly infected necks and embedded collars, but it's uncommon to see cases like Jake's in Ottawa, said Bruce Roney, the Ottawa
Humane Society's executive director.
“I have been here 20 years. I have never seen anything like this.”
The number of stray dogs brought to the humane society has declined over the years, and has dropped even more during the pandemic. There were 642 stay dogs brought to the humane society in 2019. Last year, there were 416.
Typically, 60 to 70 per cent of stray dogs and their owners are reunited, often on the first day, Roney said. “The ones who don't go home were probably never meant to go home.”
Jake will be put up for adoption, but right now it's hard to say when he will be ready for that. In high-profile cases like Jake's, there is often a lot of interest in adopting.
Meanwhile, the humane society launched a fundraiser to help pay for Jake's care.
“The response has been terrific. People in Ottawa truly do care about animals,” Roney said.
If Jake's owner is ever found, a charge of animal neglect or cruelty could be laid. The Ottawa Humane Society has not had its own investigator since 2016.
Roney said he was looking out the window and saw Jake getting exercise a few days ago.
“He's really, really happy now,” he said. “Animals are just so forgiving. It's amazing.”
Hutchings said this case really touched her heart.
“There are sad days. There are hard cases. But there are also times of joy when you see an animal recover from a condition and go on to find their forever home.”
It was shocking. It was sad. It was a hard day.
A 31-year-old man faces charges after Ottawa police and the OPP biker enforcement unit executed a search warrant in the city's east end.
A “large quantity of controlled substances,” drug packaging, scales, cellphones, a conducted-energy weapon and outlaw motorcycle gang paraphernalia were seized on Friday, the Ottawa
Police Service said Monday.
The Ottawa man is charged with possession of property obtained by crime under $5,000 and nine counts of possession of a substance for the purpose of trafficking. He also faces Cannabis Act charges of possession for the purpose of selling and possession for the purpose of distributing.
He was released on an undertaking to appear at a future court date.
Ontario's Critical Care COVID Command Centre recently released an “emergency standard of care for major surge” protocol, which is intended to “save the most lives in the most ethical manner possible” if the COVID -19 pandemic threatens to overwhelm hospitals.
A significant feature of the protocol is the concept of critical-care triage. If a surge in cases leads to a shortage of intensive-care unit (ICU) beds, for example, the protocol calls for prioritizing patients with the greatest chance of being alive 12 months after developing whatever condition brought them to the point of requiring ICU treatment.
The National Post reported on Jan. 21 that Ontario's Bioethics Table is requesting that Ontario doctors be given the unilateral ability to terminate life-support treatment for their patients in order to free up medical resources for other patients.
The Bioethics Table also wants doctors to be insulated from any liability related to these life-ending decisions.
These initiatives seem to be influenced by a form of utilitarian thinking, which focuses on maximizing health outcomes with the available scarce resources.
No doubt there is value in considering maximizing the “good”
for the “greatest numbers.” However, it always leaves open the question as to how do we actually define the “good.” Additionally, utilitarian analysis often fails to account for other impacts. We know that members of marginalized groups tend to have the poorest health outcomes.
The proposed major surge protocol tries to allay concerns about discrimination in resource-allocation decisions. However, by prioritizing those with better likely health outcomes, utilitarian rationing schemes ultimately engage in discrimination and deepen marginalization.
Utilitarianism is not the only
theoretical approach to ethical issues; it is overly simplistic and precarious to resort to utilitarian reasoning out of sheer efficiency considerations. Legal and human rights norms and standards reflect that other ethical obligations exist and should prevail.
We have come to a point where we recognize human rights and acknowledge the historic tendency to create systems rife with systemic discrimination. This stems from a human propensity to develop institutions that tend to reflect back an image of those creating the system — unconsciously or otherwise.
The problem of a COVID-19 surge requires more than a basic
ethics framework; it requires the operation of law informed by an understanding of human rights and the determinants of health. Rights aim to protect and advance the interests of the weakest and most marginalized among us. Recitation of the importance of avoiding prohibited forms of discrimination rings hollow when it is accompanied by a protocol document calling for a utilitarian triage system.
It is important to note that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in October 2013 in the Rasouli case that Ontario doctors do not have the unilateral ability to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from their patients when they disagree with a substitute decision-maker. Moreover, in February 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Carter case that the prohibition on assisted death was unconstitutional in relation to competent adults who seek death as a response to their condition.
While these cases are different, the point is that the Supreme Court emphasized the requirement for consent. In the Rasouli case, the court did not enable health care professionals to unilaterally impose a “duty to die” on patients consuming medical resources that did not satisfy the doctors' concept of what was beneficial.
The practice of medicine must never devolve to the point of recommending — or imposing — death as a treatment “option” in pursuit of systemic efficiency above patient autonomy and consent. This is especially true when these efficiency considerations are built upon systemic discrimination.
Our laws and legal system exist to provide order, equality, consistency and protection against arbitrariness, discrimination and confusion. We cannot simply opt out of our laws — and Supreme Court decisions — when times get tough. Indeed, it is during difficult times that we most need our laws and our legal system.
Now, more than ever, we cannot afford to lose our way.