We humans are terrific at measuring and recordkeeping— we even know the length of Noah’s ark, in cubits (300) no less. Technology abets this trait, as computers dutifully crunch our numbers, ad, well, infinitum. As a species, however, we are not so good at appraising information to extract its meaning. Confronted with new data, we tend to overemphasize and generalize, often less than critically.

On that cautionary note, what are we dog people to make of a new University of California, Davis, study that examines relationships between early, late or no spay/neuter and several health conditions in Golden Retrievers? How do we apply its conclusions to the animals in our care?

The Davis docs found increased risk of several cancers, hip dysplasia and cranial cruciate ligament tears among sterilized Goldens; the incidence varied according to the sex and age-at-neuter of their subjects. As such, their findings add to a growing library of veterinary literature on the spay/neuter subject. However, the authors are careful to limit their conclusions, as should we.

First, the findings are breed-specific. Goldens, a highly inbred line, were chosen in part because of their susceptibility to cancers and joint issues. The gene pool was further limited by a study sample of dogs (759, to be precise) seen at the UC Davis clinic, in northern California.

Second, we need to remind ourselves that risk is not destiny, and that correlation is not causation. The study notes that the risk of one type of canine cancer quadrupled in late-neutered females, but also reveals that its incidence grew from 1.6 to 7.4 percent— meaning that about 93 percent of the subjects did not contract the disease.

The authors also indicate that they did not specifically consider obesity, another known factor in dysplasia and cancers. Neutered dogs do tend to be heavier, but we can manage that risk by controlling food intake and quality. We also need to recognize that other studies have noted countervailing positive health effects, as spay/neuter reduces or eliminates rates of other common diseases, such as mammary cancers and uterine infections.

Third, context is crucial. These data feed into the universe of things that are harmful to canines. We know, for example, that nationwide, some 50 percent of the animals in shelters don’t survive the experience. To the extent that intact canines contribute litters to the shelter population, that risk dwarfs exposure to accidents or disease. Shelter “save” rates are improving in many places, but we remain far from a no-kill equilibrium. Job One for canine partisans (including the veterinary community) remains the imperative to reduce that carnage.

After sheltering, risk-of-death varies widely by age and breed. A comprehensive University of Georgia study of vet-reported deaths (“Mortality in North American Dogs from 1984 to 2004,” published in 2011) identifies infections, trauma and birth defects as primary culprits in young dogs, with tumor-related diseases at various breed-specific rates, distantly followed by trauma and infections, which dominate the tally for the late-in-lifespan.

Finally, there are the behavioral and other risk implications of fertility, including management of ardent males and bitches in heat.

The Davis study is a significant contribution to our understanding of the unintended consequences of fertility management in a useful and popular breed. Reproductive organs contribute hormones for many reasons—it would be surprising if their removal were completely trivial. Alternatives to traditional spay/neuter do exist, but they are rarely performed. Injectable sterilizers and contraceptives are coming on the market (they, of course, will carry their own measurable side effects).

It’s important to recognize the limitations of the study: one breed, one gene pool, defined conditions and their rank among all the calamities that can befall our best friends. The study itself notes that spay/neuter is uncommon in Europe, which would appear to open up a range of comparative research possibilities and fertility management options.

We should add the Davis work to the burgeoning database. But until a lot more measurements have been taken from which broader conclusions may be drawn, the best advice is not general to all dogs, but individualized: choose your canine companions carefully and love and support them well, and completely. And recognize that we can’t measure or control for everything, yet—or ever.

In this no-kill manifesto, attorney Nathan Winograd identifies the moment when he believes the budding humane movement lost its way. Overruling the wishes of its founder, Henry Bergh, ASPCA agreed in the late 1800s to operate New York’s cruelly primitive dog pounds. Thus, the organization became accustomed to killing animals, albeit more compassionately than under the city’s brutal regime. Winograd argues that the animal welfare establishment has remained mired in 19th-century thinking and processes, to unnecessarily fatal effect for the five million healthy animals destroyed in US animal “shelters” each year.

He traces the movement’s history, highlighting its failed attempts to legislate, educate and coercively sterilize the nation out of its presumed pet over-population problem. Policies have been founded, he claims, on twin (and false) premises: that there are too many companion animals to be absorbed into proper homes, and that the public can be harangued into more responsible care of its pets. This has led shelters to the hopeless approach of “adopting out a few and killing the rest” of their unlucky tenants, while blaming an indifferent citizenry for their thankless task.

He then describes no-kill successes in San Francisco; Charlottesville, Va.; and Reno, Nev., as well as his own shelter management work in rural Tompkins County, N.Y. Here the book comes alive as he reports life-or-death tales of animals who were spared the needle by the best efforts of shelter personnel applying the logic, tactics and creative hard work of the no-kill paradigm: low-cost spay/neuter, foster and rescue care, medical/behavioral interventions, trap/neuter/release for feral cats, and several species of community outreach. In each case, shelters dramatically reduced their kill rates to under 10 percent of all animals without selective intake or “adoptability” analyses to eliminate problem critters—no smoke, no mirrors. He also explodes the claim of inherent overpopulation, demonstrating that sufficient homes are available if only they can be more effectively linked with needy animals.

Finally, Winograd indicts the humane establishment for seeking to discredit—rather than embrace—these successes. San Francisco was proclaimed too urban (and, remarkably, too “gay”); Tompkins County, too rural and Yankee; Charlottesville, too collegiate, and so on. Institutional interests, he believes, have outweighed their life-saving mission. Indeed, the response of the mainstream organizations to this book will be crucial and instructive. One hopes for a collaboration toward better, 21st-century “best practices.” Eyes on the prize, everyone—our behavior should not embarrass our pets.

The world owes much to those rare individuals who see things differently—and who then devote themselves to vindicating their maverick conclusions. Though Redemption is repetitive, may be over-harsh on no-kill’s detractors, and concentrates more on diagnosis than cure, it’s an important work. The shelter world has shielded most of the public from the grim realities of its operations, and has convinced the rest that change is possible only at the margins. This book is a clarion call to the burgeoning, pet-loving community—readers of The Bark, perhaps—to demand better from its shelters, and to participate in the soulful work of saving lives.

Buy this book

There’s a knothole in the fence near our front door, right about Collie-eye level. When we come home, our Border Collie, Genghis, is invariably at the knothole, trying to anticipate who’s arriving. (That part’s not surprising— anticipation is what BCs do, after all.) But it’s not his eye to the knothole—it’s his nose.
Scientists have long warned against the imprecision and misimpressions of anthropomorphizing animal subjects—of ascribing human qualities to them. The stated enemy is the assumption that their cognitive processes mirror our own complicated mental analyses, instead of the preferred notion that lower species are purer examples of stimulus/response behaviors. If we were to assume that they’re like us in that regard, objective scientific findings might be muddled by dreaded subjectivity.
Having witnessed a few of the routine indignities visited on animals by scientific research, however, my own (subjective) suspicion is that, as far as science is concerned, the real enemy is the human instinct to care. Whether labeled “sentimentality” or the less pejorative “humanity,” it gets in the way of research. Caring complicates experimental processes with issues like routine maintenance that respects the animals’ nature, and the ultimate fate of the subjects upon conclusion of their work for us. In other words, it costs money. The fact that vet schools have been slow (and late) to even consider ethics curricula suggests to me that anthropomorphism is also a technical term for “inertia.”
That’s bad enough. But there’s another, broader problem that interferes with the relationships all animal keepers have with their companion animals: economists call it “opportunity cost.” That term is related to the implications of the road not taken, or the conclusion drawn too quickly.
Anthropomorphizing leads us off the scent (and over a perceptual cliff) in understanding canine behaviors by imposing the assumption that they perceive the world as we do—that their sensory inputs are limited to the capacities of our dull, sight-oriented biology. Every species probably has its own misguided conceits, and this one robs us of a richer understanding of our canine brethren.
Collies are not the scent champs of the canine world—far from it. But think of what it would mean to have noses 100 times more capable (if objective science is to be believed) than our own! Sight is obviously useful in our Darwinian niche, but it’s also transitory. Scent, by contrast, allows a look back in time at not just what’s happening now, but at what occurred a day, a week or much longer ago. And think how sensual and rich the smell of soup is when each ingredient can be perceived.
Medical researchers are lately beginning to comprehend this factoid in the context of cancer-sniffing dogs, whose noses far outstrip the capabilities of other diagnostic tools. Predictably, they are also sparing no effort to try to improve their mechanical devices to better mimic the canine nostrils’ remarkable sensitivity. Gosh—if only there were a cheap source of canines who might be trained and devoted to that humanitarian task for a decade or more, with few repairs and only low-cost maintenance required.
I listened to a call-in show recently, hosted by a supposed animal expert. A caller inquired about his dog, who sometimes raised his hackles for no apparent reason when they were out for a walk. The expert called it “idiopathic,” a fancy term for irrational, random or unexplainable. Allow me to suggest an alternative explanation: the dog was responding to clear messages from the environment that we lack the wits to comprehend.
We don’t know how Lassie knew that Timmy had fallen down the well at the old Johnson place. But we ought to be grateful, and not dismiss canine behaviors as random or silly. We need to appreciate that anthropomorphism sells them way short—they’re much better than we are at most sensations. We have a lot to learn from dogs, if we only will.

To paraphrase Billy Beane, as played by Brad Pitt in the popular movie Moneyball, “There’s the one percent, and the 99 percent, then there’s fifty feet of crap, and then there’re shelter animals.”

That reality is stark in California, where Governor Jerry Brown has proposed gutting the state’s landmark Hayden Bill, a 1998 law that requires at least a six-day ‘hold’ period before impounded animals can be legally killed by shelter personnel. (“Euthanasia” doesn’t fit here—these deaths will have nothing to do with mercy. In this context, that term might better be called “euphemasia.”)

World-weary critics (I raise my hand) characterize the bill as a particularly cynical element of the Governor’s ongoing campaign to prod his electorate into raising taxes by November referendum. It would halve the “shelter hold” period, sending thousands of retrievable and adoptable stray pets to certain death. Mr. Brown’s proposal takes his predecessor’s “Terminator” persona from the realm of science fiction to tragic realism.  

Hayden’s humane provisions have been copied across the country, and here in California, they are a substantial step in the transformation of the state’s pounds from disposal facilities to shelters true-to- their-name and adoption centers. The six-day hold allows owners to locate and retrieve their animals. It is also crucial to mobilizing the state’s burgeoning “rescue” movement, which pulls strays into private (read: “free”) foster care for eventual adoption. “Save” rates have climbed steadily, especially in populated areas. Finally, most animals can’t be properly evaluated for temperament until they’ve had a chance to settle-in to their confined, chaotic circumstances. Six days is not enough for many—less than that is absurd.

The cynicism claim is bolstered by examining the claimed pay-off for this slaughter: $23 million, in a state budget of $137 billion. My calculator and I had difficulty arriving at so small a number as the savings percentage, but it appears to be on the order of 0.00017 percent. And the state hasn’t even been actually spending that money since 2009. So it’s a massive animal sacrifice, without even a proper altar.  

Further, the math used to conjure those savings is ignorant of the true economics of sheltering. Killing drugs, and especially carcass disposal, are expensive; pet food is not. Adoption and redemption fees that would be foregone in this mayhem are also a significant income stream—often fully offsetting the direct costs of food and meds.

Companion animals and their keepers don’t get much from the legal system. But there are certain minimum decencies that government can and should provide. Hayden should be a source of considerable pride, and legislative deference, as a tangible demonstration of the humane instincts of California’s populace.

After outrage comes mobilization. In the next installment: What you can do. Stay tuned!