My Animal Legislation Wish List (Because We Can't Give Animal Abusers The Death Penalty)

Animal lovers may be the only people whose "love" causes the suffering, neglect and brutal deaths of the beloved. People who love rare coins or lava lamps or antiques and must fill their homes with these things don't cause suffering and death but people who "love" animals and feel that they just have to "own" pets are actually perpetuating animal suffering and death by providing puppy mills and breeders with a financial incentive to bring more cats and dogs into a world that already has more cats and dogs than it is able or willing to care for. So let me repeat what I said in my 1 July 2010 post: if you love animals, help reduce the commercial demand for dogs and cats by refusing to feed the breeding beast. Don't buy a cute kitten at a pet store. Don't buy a precious puppy. When your current pet dies, don't get another pet. Instead, consider becoming a foster home for rescued dogs and cats while their rescuers find them permanent homes. 

As a systems thinker, I know there are only two ways to reduce the number of neglected, abused and suffering animals. The first way would be to reduce the population of humans who breed animals, neglect animals, and torture animals and to reduce the number of irresponsible pet owners who don't spay and neuter their animals leaving them free bring more cats and dogs into a world for humans to abuse or neglect. 

But, as appealing as it is, hunting down and killing the people who neglect and abuse animals is illegal and would land the people who eliminated the abusers and neglecters in prison where we couldn't rescue and foster animals who need us which leaves us with one other way to reduce the number of animals who suffer neglect and abuse at the hands of humans: We must reduce the number of animals available to the abusers and neglecters. Toward that end, I've compiled a little legislative wish list which I intend to share with my state legislators. 

1. Pet "owners" would be required to spay and neuter their pets or pay a stiff fine. Attention Bonnie Brown, Barb Hatfield, et al., Google SB 250 and find that New York City already passed this kind of spay/neuter law and Californians are working on a statewide SB 250 spay/neuter law.

2. In West Virginia, it would be illegal to buy or sell an animal that comes from any puppy mill or other breeding facility - even if that facility is owned by the Governor's family - and it would be illegal to operate such a facility in West Virginia.

3. People found guilty of abusing or neglecting animals would never again be allowed to own or keep animals and would receive a punishment similar to the treatment they inflicted on the animals they mistreated. People who starve animals would be sentenced to starvation nearly to the point of death. People who light animals on firer would be tortured with fire. People who beat animals would be beaten nearly to the point of death. People who tether their dog to a stake in the yard and leave it shivering in the cold and deprived of food, water and companionship could be chained on the courthouse lawn for a week or so in the middle of January. People caught trying to provide food, water or comfort to them would tethered in like manner. 

Political candidates who strap their pets to the roof of the car would be similarly "kenneled", roof-topped and driven to Canada where, if they're lucky, someone would hose them off. 

You get the idea. I don't know any judges but if I did I would ask them why they don't sentence animal abusers to punishments similar to their crimes. 

To find out who represents you, go to http://www.legis.state.wv.us/ and tell your elected officials that, since it would be illegal to reduce the number of humans who abuse and neglect animals, you want them to introduce legislation that reduces the number of animals available to the abusers and neglecters.

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Higginbotham At Large reads all submitted comments - even if they come from animal abusers and neglecters - but Higginbotham At Large does not publish anonymous or pseudonymous comments from anybody.

Death With Dignity - Why My Mother Didn't Get It (And Yours May Not, Either)

As some of my readers know, my mother recently passed away. Now both of my parents are dead.

Here's what some of you may not know unless you learned it the hard way: before your parents die, they are likely to lose their dignity in a great many ways. No child should ever see his parents urinating on themselves, defecating on themselves and losing their mental capacity but there's a good chance you will be there not just to witness but to cause the embarrassment of your parents as they say things that are crazy, as they forget how to use a phone, write a check, work the TV remote or answer the phone. There's a good chance you'll see your parents' private parts and wipe waste off those private parts much to their embarrassment and shame. And as much as it will bother you to have to wipe feces off your parents and change their diapers and sheets, it will bother them more. Well, it will bother them until they lose their self-awareness as my mother did in the last days of her slow death by cancer.

My mother tried to avoid all this by asking all her doctors from her gynecologist to her radiologist to her cancer specialist to her hospice physician to kill her. I was in the room each time she asked a doctor to kill her. 

"When a dog or a cat gets old and sick we take them to the veterinarian and the vet puts them to sleep with a pill or a shot and we call that compassion. So why can't you do that for me?" she asked.

I'm on her side. I hope one day West Virginia lawmakers will be on her side, too.

A lot of European countries and a handful of US states have legalized physician assisted suicide but West Virginia is not one of them. My mother told one of her doctors about a TV show she had seen about legalized physician assisted suicide in Europe. I hadn't seen it so I Googled it and found that the show was on Frontline and is called "The Suicide Tourist". I found the DVD at the Kanawha County Public library.

Had my mother been able to travel and had she asked me to take her to Switzerland or to Montana or to Washington or Oregon so she could avoid losing her dignity, I would have taken her but by the time  she decided to quit radiation and chemotherapy she was unable to even sit up, much less travel. 

I think mom thought that if she refused further chemo and radiation the cancer would take her quickly. It didn't. She had a slow-growing cancer and spent the last 6 months of her life in hospice care - some of it in her own home. The hospice nurses came to her home every day to attend to her prolapsed uterus and to her many infections but there was nothing hospice could do about her depression and her loss of dignity. In the last months of her life she didn't suffer much physically because, whether she was at the hospice house or home in her own bed, we kept her medicated with oxycodone and Fentanyl but, as my mom said, there are many ways to suffer.

I hope West Virginia joins the growing number of countries and states where the compassion we afford our pets is also available to humans when I get old and sick.

I'll have more to say about death with dignity and lessons I learned from my mother's pointless suffering in future posts but, in case you missed it, here's the takeaway from this one: write, call or email your legislators today and tell them to legalize physician assisted suicide so that you and your parents will not have to lose every ounce of dignity in the last days of of a pointless death vigil. I've already sent copies of this post to delegates I know like Bonnie Brown and Barbara Hatfield and to some delegates I don't know.

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