Animal Welfare Has a Poverty Problem: Essay inspired by Rethinking Rescue

Edited by: Christina P.

As a former animal welfare professional who worked closely with extreme medical and behavioral cases, Rethinking Rescue stuck out to me as a book that I simply had to read. The book covers the work of rescuer Lori Weise, who has dedicated her career to serving the homeless pets and their parents in LA. We spend our time throughout the book learning about Lori’s personal life and path to rescue, while also consuming some hard facts about animal welfare.

After all, many people who enter the industry often come with their own baggage and are seeking refuge with animals after being hurt by people (I don’t have stats on that- it’s just my personal experience).

While I feel as though the book would’ve benefited from a lesser focus on Lori’s past, I find that it explains a lot of the issues that I have experienced and witnessed in animal welfare. Namely, that rescue has become an activity that is ‘in fashion’ and when something is on trend, you can bet the rich will gatekeep it.

“As the routine killing of homeless animals was redefined as a moral outrage, shelter policies changed. Adopting a shelter pet became a badge of honor.”

Visit any gentrified arts district, and you’re sure to see a plethora of white women in spandex who hold the leashes of their rescue labs outfitted in seasonal banana outfits and matching collars. These are often the ‘ideal’ adopters for shelters and rescues who pat themselves on the back for placing another dog with the ‘perfect’ owner.

These ideal owners also pat themselves on the back. They’ve just done their good deed for the year by saving a perfectly adoptable dog from being adopted by a family with far less resources than them. They’re not going to volunteer or adopt a less desirable dog – they did their part by picking out the dream pup who’s already house-trained thanks to the family who could no longer afford to feed them once COVID hit.

And there, my friends, is the issue.

Image of a white bully mix with big tan marks that look as though he is wearing a suit. He sits on a pet cot surrounded by stuffed animals. He looks at the camera with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. — Art, a torture case, spent multiple years in the shelter before eventually being euthanized for behavioral issues.

Let’s call this fictional furry friend Bella (you’ll always find at least five of them in the shelter at any given moment). A family friend sold Bella as a puppy, and she grew up with two kids and their single mom. She’s house trained, leash trained, and doesn’t bark too much. But she’s a lab, and they resemble something akin to a garbage disposal, and that single mom lost her job when COVID lockdowns went into place. The local shelters never have enough food in the food banks, and the low-wage job she found won’t give her the day off to attend their events, anyway. Eventually, Bella’s owners surrendered her to their local shelter, where her new rich parents would eventually find her.

Where the shelter could’ve realized that there was a gap in the services they provide, they instead took on the costs of feeding, housing, and providing medical care to Bella until someone adopted her. Instead of setting her owner up with appointments for pet food pickups, they accepted her surrender and added a note in Bella’s bio that reads, “Due to no fault of her own, Bella was surrendered to the shelter. She doesn’t understand why her family didn’t want her and hopes to find the perfect paw-rent soon!”

“But the majority of dogs and cats held by shelters and rescues aren’t victims of deliberate cruelty. They’re more likely to have begun their lives as poor people’s pets.”

Rethinking Rescue asks you to consider the pets AND the people – and not just when those people are privileged. The book further highlights how animal welfare in America focuses on moving pets from poor homes to wealthy homes, all while the suffering of animals and people continues. Instead of getting down to the root of the issue, our animal welfare industry often focuses on temporary band aids that do little to solve the day-to-day issues pets and their owners face.

According to the book, a lot of this has to do with our attitude towards those living in poverty. People often see poverty as a fault of the person experiencing it. It is a moral failing that makes these people unworthy of their pets – and especially unworthy of the shelter’s time. Let’s play pretend again.

Image of a grey bully mix holding a large red ball with handles between his paws. His mouth is open as he chews on a handle. — Bosco was a cruelty case who was shot by a neighbor and became reactive afterwards. He was eventually euthanized after he deteriorated in shelter.

A Black man named Marquis comes into the shelter to surrender his dog, Luna. She’s a tawny Staffordshire Terrier mix with an expressive face who never met a stranger. When Marquis completes the surrender paperwork, he marks two reasons for surrender: hardship and medical. Unfortunately for Marquis, his employer laid him off eight months ago, and he has yet to find a new job. He could not afford his dog’s monthly preventatives and she’s contracted heartworms.

Marquis doesn’t know a lot about heartworms, but he knows Luna needs to be treated and that he has no way of paying for that treatment. He can hardly feed himself right now. How is he supposed to afford something like that? It’s better to give her a fighting chance by leaving her at the shelter. He’ll miss her like hell, but he can’t be selfish.

The shelter employee instantly falls in love with Luna, but she’s giving the cold shoulder to Marquis. Not only is he surrendering his dog, but he’s surrendering a sick dog when she needs him the most. Maybe if he’d taken proper care of her, neither of them would be in this situation! While she would never admit it to herself, she subconsciously thinks of all the times her coworkers have warned her that Black people don’t care for their pets. The employee doesn’t look at Luna and think, “What a well-maintained coat. She’s incredibly well socialized too! He must love his dog.”

She doesn’t offer him resources for managing heartworms or provide him with heartworm prevention (which can slow the progress of the heartworm disease). Instead, she takes Luna to the back and makes a note in her bio, “Hi! I’m Luna, the friendliest pup you’ll ever meet! Don’t you just love my big smile? They abandoned me at the shelter with heartworms, but I know my dream home is just around the corner!“

Not that these initiatives to help pet owners don’t exist. Spay/neuter and vaccine events are commonplace for well-funded rescues and shelters. My shelter not only had these events but also ran a low-cost vet clinic, food bank, and situational fostering program. These initiatives were great, but the funding was never enough to keep them going for the entire year and often not enough to keep those pets with their families. As housing costs continue to rise, so do the fees that come with pet ownership.

“And when humans lost housing, their animals usually did as well—and sometimes their lives. Keeping people off the street and pets out of shelters was part of the same fight.”

Anyone who has attempted to rent an apartment has likely encountered pet and deposit fees. When I first adopted my cat, Honey, nearly a decade ago, we paid no pet deposit or monthly pet fees. By the time we moved a couple of years later, the deposit was $50 per pet and by our next move, we were paying a $350 pet deposit for each cat, plus a $15 pet rent every month. The average pet deposit as of 2024 ranges from $200-$500 with pet fees ranging from $25-$100 per month, according to Zillow¹.

Rethinking Rescue references a paper titled “Pet Friendly for Whom?” which analyzes pet fees in Texas rental housing.² The study notes that as pet-ownership is not a protected status under the Fair Housing Act, pet owners face discrimination when searching for housing. Further, because of lack of federal regulation for pet fees and deposits, there is no legal limit to the number of fees or the cost of pet deposits. These fees, like certain adoption requirements set forth by shelters, are often a way of weeding out ‘undesirables’.

“– Additionally, when pet fee burden was defined as a function of average income by census tract, low-income communities and communities of color were more likely than higher income and predominantly White communities to pay disproportionately higher fees to keep pets in their homes.” – Pet Friendly For Whom?

But in animal welfare, can we truly afford to weed out ‘undesirables’ when we euthanized 690,000 cats and dogs in 2023 alone?³ Are these animals better off being warehoused in the stressful shelter environment than they are in a home where the owner can only afford to feed them dog chow? No, they’re not.

My shelter was a no-kill shelter. Rethinking Rescue identifies the “no-kill” status as the spark igniting the “who rescued who?” fire that has yet to stop burning. A no-kill shelter is one that has achieved a 90% live release rate.⁴ Meaning, the shelter does not euthanize to make space for incoming pets. While many people view this as admirable, it has resulted in a plethora of issues. One of these issues is animal warehousing.

Now, before I get into this, I want to be clear that I did not always see this as an issue. In fact, I was a tremendous supporter of no-kill and my favorite shelter dogs were always the ‘problem children’ who spent a minimum of two years at the shelter (if they ever made it out). These were dogs that had faced torture, abuse, starvation, and somehow come out the other side still willing to love someone, even if that someone was me and a handful of other shelter employees. They didn’t deserve to die! They deserved every chance to live.

But ‘living’ in a shelter can often drive a dog to insanity. I’ve witnessed it. Repeatedly.

May, a long term resident, poses next to Sam at a restaurant they frequently visited.
May’s last day with shelter staff before being euthanized due to increased behavioral issues.
May’s last day with shelter staff before being euthanized due to increased behavioral issues.

In fact, I’ve watched nearly all of my favorite dogs slowly deteriorate after spending years in the stressful shelter environment. This may look like shelf harming (i.e., bashing head into walls, chewing limbs), aggression towards other dogs or humans, anorexia, and sometimes simply losing the will to live at all.

Let’s revisit Luna, the fictional Staffy our pretend friend, Marquis, surrendered. Despite her friendly temperament, Luna has now sat at the shelter for nine months. She still hasn’t received heartworm treatment, but her adopters will receive a voucher to cover her treatment post adoption! Unfortunately for Luna, her breed prohibits her from most apartments, and she continues to sit in the shelter. After nearly a year in the shelter, Luna has begun to display some problem behaviors.

The kennel staff reports that she’s been growling when they go to feed her, and they’ve seen her lunge at visitors through the glass. They’re worried because this is so out of character for her! The vet decides to place her on a dose of trazodone to see if it helps, but eventually the staff report that she bit a team member when they went to leash Luna up for a walk. The foster team puts out an urgent foster plea for Luna, but after a few months, she remains in the shelter and has bitten another staff member. The shelter decides to euthanize Luna and make space for another dog.

If the intake staff had offered that voucher to Marquis when he came to surrender Luna, would he have kept her? Would they still be together?

Would Luna have remained that happy social dog instead of a corpse inside a freezer?

Would Marquis have felt less alone while dealing with his situation?

If that shelter worker hadn’t written him off as a ‘bad pet parent’ due to racism, would that have prevented any of this?

How many dogs could’ve had their chance on the adoption floor if Luna hadn’t sat there for a year, steadily deteriorating?

Not that I think no-kill is some ‘horrible practice that needs to be abolished.’ I think it’s admirable to want to have so many positive outcomes for the animals in your care. However, the practice of no-kill is one that I find futile with the current state of animal welfare. Many shelters and rescues that boast of their no-kill status are often closed or limited intake shelters. Meaning, they only take in animals when they have the space. They can achieve no-kill by turning away owner surrenders, strays, and refusing to ‘pull’ (aka transfer) pets from other shelters.

I simply feel that focusing on a live-release rate feels a lot better than examining how many shelters get there in the first place – by selecting only the most ‘adoptable’ dogs, by refusing intake, and by warehousing animals who eventually deteriorate or spend half their life living in a shelter. I think about how many of them could’ve spent that time in their homes if only their owners had the appropriate resources and education to care for them.

How many animals could’ve been placed if we moved to a conversational adoption model that educated potential adopters and broke down barriers to adoption? If we judged people less on their zip code and more on their willingness to learn… If we simply viewed them as people and not marks on the ‘Ideal Adopter’ checklist…

According to a report from “Shelter Animals Count,” 3,118,000 cats and dogs entered the U.S. shelter system in the first half of 2024.⁵ The same report also states that there have been 82,000 fewer adoptions than in 2023. Although these numbers aren’t currently alarming, my experience with animal welfare during COVID lockdowns showed me that various factors can influence them.

For example, my rescue was a limited-intake shelter that focused on cruelty cases. Prior to COVID lockdowns we still took in owner surrenders and strays on a regular basis, but once COVID hit, we turned people away constantly. We referred them to the city shelter, only to find that the city shelter had also denied them intake. Eventually, people would resort to letting the animal loose in hopes someone who would care for them would find them. Alternatively, they may have been told that the shelter was ONLY intaking strays and subsequently claim their pet was a stray in order to relinquish the animal.

Regardless, animal welfare has struggled for quite some time, and I expect it to continue to struggle as the cost-of-living soars and pet parenting becomes inaccessible to poor people. I say pet ‘parenting’ to respect the relationship that many people have with their pets. Their animals are family and often a bright spot in a word that constantly seeks to dull our shine.

As Rethinking Rescue mentions when discussing homeless pet parents and their animals, pets often keep us alive. For many, they are the sole reason we stay alive. And I believe that if animal welfare could make that connection between human welfare and animal welfare, pets and their parents would all be better off.