Dog hits classroom to help teach empathy
‘It’s all about kids being nice to each other,’ says lawyer who specializes in animal law
Paws, then hit play.
Brontë the English field spaniel, chewy toy in mouth, joined her human co-educator Victoria Shroff in school on Wednesday to teach a group of Grade 6 and 7 kids at Henry Hudson elementary school in Kitsilano about picking up on the feelings of others in a pilot program called Paws of Empathy.
The idea formed nine years ago after Shroff heard the Dalai Lama speak at the Orpheum Theatre and mention the Roots of Empathy program, in which schoolchildren explore the development and emotions of babies.
“A baby is helpless, it was about how to show empathy,” Shroff said.
“I figured I’d like to do that with animals someday. It’s all about kids being nice to each other.”
Shroff is a specialist in a littleknown area of legal practice called animal law. She also lectures in the subject at UBC as an adjunct professor. In her almost-20 years of practice, she’s worked on cases from B.C. to Newfoundland and lectured from New Zealand to India.
Animal law is, basically, anything involving law and animals, to give the obvious answer. That can involve tort, property, contract, criminal, municipal, commercial, wills or family law, among other areas. Cases Shroff has worked on include a shipment of horse semen going missing in transit, defamation in the horse world, pet custody, dog bites, veterinary malpractice, insurance claims, tail docking, dolphins caught in fishing nets, sled dogs, chimpanzees as persons ... the list seems endless.
So when did animal law become a thing ?
“Animal law has been around for a very long time,” Shroff said.
“We’ve had animals involved with the law from the time we started law, actually. People wanted to protect their cattle, for example, so animal law started off as protection of property.
“There are a few exceptions here and there, but to this day, for the most part, the law still views animals as property and nothing more.
“That hasn’t changed for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
Today, Shroff takes good-natured jibes in stride — the Ace Ventura jokes, the Who Let the Dogs Out choruses. “I’m still a novelty,” she said. “And it’s true, animals are adorable, but it is substantive law that drives animal law cases, not Disney movie plots.”