Because we can

“Why are so many people so cruel to their dogs?” That is the question The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten set out to answer when he spent three days in the field with workers from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals who investigate complaints of cruelty. The closest he came to any kind of answer — after witnessing one instance after another after another of dogs chained or caged in truly horrific conditions — is because they can. Hopefully, though, his searing exposé will wake up local and state officials to the need to ban the unattended tethering of dogs.

Dogs are naturally social beings. They need interaction with humans and/or other animals, but it sadly is commonplace for owners to leave their dogs outside in all weather extremes, attached to some stationary structure or imprisoned in a pen. Necks become sore and raw; collars can grow into their skin, and they are vulnerable to parasites and insects. Often they are denied food and water. Four of the dogs rescued by PETA during the three days of Weingarten’s reporting were so damaged they had to be euthanized.

“I have been doing this for 25 years, and I still don’t understand it,” Daphna Nachminovitch, PETA’s senior vice president of cruelty investigations, told us about what she sees as the disconnect between someone deciding to own a dog and then utterly failing to understand its most basic needs. While she acknowledged that “you can’t force people to love and respect and show kindness to animals,” Nachminovitch stressed that it is possible to impose and enforce some basic rules of decency and humanity. PETA has led the effort to try to persuade states and localities to ban the brutal practice of leaving dogs unattended for hours on end tethered to a chain or trapped in a pen. Twenty-two states and D.C. have laws that attempt to limit the number of hours or specifying what kind of collar or length of chain is allowed. But those efforts have come up short. None have banned unattended tethering entirely.

As Weingarten wrote, “There is a terrible power that comes with being human. But there is a potentially beautiful power in that, too. In this brutally unequal world, isn’t that part of the covenant with our pets? Don’t we owe them that much dignity?” Animals are helpless, but when it comes to making their lives more bearable, people are not.