One of the statistics we hear fairly often in veterinary school is that when the economy crashed in 2008, pet ownership declined with it. We talk about this in order to understand the potential impact of a shrinking client base on the veterinary profession and to get a firmer grasp on what affects the economy can have on veterinary medicine. We then understand why pet ownership has decreased fairly steadily; what we never talk about, however, is how this happens.
The reason that?s easiest to stomach is that when older pets die, owners do not replace them with new additions to the family because they can no longer afford to do so. ?However, there are also the people who cannot afford to have their current pet and have to find something to do with that young, healthy animal. ?
One option is to give the animal up for adoption. ?This is a feasible outcome for an owner if the pet is non-aggressive, because then the person can give the animal to an adoption-guarantee shelter that is obligated to keep it. ?However, one of the problems with this is that most shelters are often full to capacity and an influx of pets puts a big strain on them. ?The owner must also read the fine print in the shelter?s policy very clearly because even ?no-kill? can be an ambiguous term with several exceptions.
Another option is to simply release the animal on the streets. ?I heard about this when I spent a semester studying in Buenos Aires as an undergraduate. Veterinarians there told me that when their economy crashed and people could no longer afford their pets, they often released them in local parks. ?That being said, abandoning an animal who is accustomed to being indoors and cared for could be considered animal cruelty.
The last option is to ask a veterinarian to euthanize the animal. ?The owner has to pay for this and has to face the hard reality that they are sentencing their pet to death (which is a likely outcome in the other two options anyway). ?Also, from the veterinarian?s standpoint, it raises a serious ethical dilemma. ?Is it acceptable to kill a healthy animal when your job is to improve their lives? ?My gut reaction is to say no. ?I would help to try to find a new home for the animal but I wouldn?t put it down. Practically though, that could make me, at least temporarily, the owner of several animals that I will have to support. If I just refused and sent the animal home with the owner, then it is likely that that animal would face one of the aforementioned fates or be taken to another veterinarian who would agree to carry out the euthanasia.?
I?ve only been referring to house pets so far; the situation gets more complicated when we start to think about horses too. ?Horses are even more expensive to keep than small animals and have even longer lives. There are very few horse shelters in the country and most of them are consistently full. ?It can be hard, practically speaking, to just abandon a horse in a field, which leaves euthanasia or simply not providing proper care (not feeding enough, skimping on routine care, etc.). So if an equine veterinarian faces the same quandary as her small animal counterpart, what?s the right decision? Personally, provided the horse was healthy and sound, I would try my hardest to help the client find another home for their horse instead. But realistically, what I actually would do is to go to my boss for advice and hope that I?m part of a practice with ethical guidelines that I can learn from.
There is clearly no easy solution to the unwanted animal problem. It has to be attacked from multiple directions, such as educating potential new pet owners about all of the costs of keeping a pet, discouraging breeding ?just for fun? when there are plenty of animals that need homes and trying to find a way to alleviate the financial strain of having a pet ? perhaps through discounted feeding programs for low income families or by taking a closer look at pet health insurance. As the economy recovers hopefully this will become a less severe problem, but steps should be taken to ensure that animal care does not have to suffer again the next time the economy takes a nosedive.
Nikhita Parandekar graduated from Cornell in 2011 and is a second-year veterinary student in the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine. She may be reached at nparandekar@cornellsun.com. Hoof in Mouth appears alternate Fridays this semester.?
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