Dogs Are Suffering, Too

Our concerns don't end at the factory-farm barbed-wire fence.

My first dozen or so years as a vegan, I focused my attention and advocacy almost exclusively on farmed animals. This seemed like a natural and rational approach, since farmed animals are the most numerous and arguably the most exploited subset of animals on Earth.

Since joining the staff at PETA, however, I’ve become conscious of some facts I had previously ignored. In terms of sheer numbers, no mammals live in greater numbers and in closer proximity to human beings than dogs. And because many human beings are either unaware of what dogs need or just plain cruel (or both), this is a recipe for intense and widespread suffering.

Last month, my eyes were opened to this problem in a major way when I spent a day in the field with our Community Animal Project (CAP) team. Specifically, I traveled to rural North Carolina with two dedicated CAP staffers, Ashley Beard and Hollie Wood (yes, that’s her real name). That day, we visited five homes in small towns in the eastern part of the state. It is the second of those five that I will never forget, for the rest of my life.

We pulled up outside a mobile home that sat on a trash-strewn half-acre lot. The occupant wasn’t home, but there were eight dogs arrayed around the perimeter of the property. Three were chained. Five were in filthy pens. All eight were underweight, their rib cages visibly protruding in some cases.

The three of us went right to work. Ashley and Hollie administered flea medication, and then went about removing the feces-caked hay in the pens and replacing it with fresh hay. Meanwhile, I scrubbed the dogs’ water containers, which were covered with dirt and mud, inside and out, and refilled them with clean water.

For the three of us, this was two hours of hard, dirty, nonstop work – performed in 89-degree heat.

Finally, we fed each of the dogs a hearty lunch. And gave them plenty of attention and affection.

These dogs are never taken on a walk, rarely or never set free from their pens or chains. They don’t know the comfort of air conditioning in the summer or central heat in the winter, nor of a couch or a bed. Hundreds of them wouldn't have any protection from the elements at all if not for the free wooden doghouses that PETA assembles and distributes. Ashley and Hollie and other CAP workers are these dogs' lifeline, their only source of compassion.

When I got back to Norfolk, I went straight to a bar and ordered a beer, in a fruitless attempt to wash that hellhole in North Carolina out of my mind. The bartender noticed my PETA t-shirt and started ribbing me. I took a deep breath, looked her in the eye, and said, “In all seriousness, if you saw what I saw today, you would donate your next two paychecks to PETA.”

I’m not asking you to do that. But if you’d like to support the strenuous work of PETA’s dedicated CAP staff, and provide food, shelter and medicine to these suffering dogs, you can do that here.

My main point is that dogs — because of their proximity to and dependence on ignorant and cruel human beings — need the attention and concern of vegans. As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about.