The Peninsula Humane Society, a non-profit animal adoption center situated in San Mateo, stunned the San Francisco Bay Area in October 1990 with a newspaper advertisement that resembled a scene from a B-movie.
The prominent image of the four-page advertisement published in the San Francisco Chronicle and other local newspapers depicted three barrels overflowing with recently euthanized cats in various degrees of rigor mortis. The headline stated “This is one HELL of a job,” followed by “And we couldn’t have done it without you.”
Chuck Thompson says in his new book, “Status Revolution: The Improbable Story of How the Lowbrow Became the Highbrow,” that the inserts’ design and message were absurd, even by today’s vulgarized standards (Simon & Schuster). The approach, however, prompted a tidal change in the way people view orphaned animals, not only in California, but across the nation.
Kim Sturla, a Berkeley graduate with a degree in psychology and a veteran animal-rights activist who managed education programs for the PHS, conceived the advertisement. Despite millions of dollars in funding for their adoption initiatives, they had little success convincing wealthy, compassionate neighbors to adopt a “shelter” pet. “When most people decided to acquire a dog, they went to a pet store or breeder first,” writes Thompson.
Sturla, who became executive director of the PHS in 1990, determined that drastic action was required.
Although the term “rescue dog” had been in use for decades, it gained popularity in the 1990s as “no-kill” shelters proliferated across the country.
Sturla, who is in her seventies, told Thompson: “Most shelters do an excellent job shielding the public from the gruesome side of dog and cat rescue.” “They sanitize the heinous, heinous reality of murdering animals due to lack of space. Killing healthy, wonderful creatures has become the norm. I wanted individuals to experience the consequences of their decisions personally.”
According to Thompson, Sturla’s “shock-and-awe” public awareness campaign was merely the opening salvo in a larger fight. The PHS suggested a law prohibiting the breeding of cats and dogs for profit. It was passed in early 1992, mandating that all pet owners sterilize their animals or suffer severe financial penalties.
However, the most significant shift went beyond simply avoiding fines. Now that Californians were adopting strays instead of purebreds, it awoke something new in them: “something exclusive, emotional, uplifting, and, most importantly, virtuous,” according to Thompson.
After winning Best in Show at the 2022 Westminster Kennel Club dog show held at the Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown, New York, Trumpet the Bloodhound sits in the winners circle.
Getty Pictures
Since the Industrial Revolution, when status was clearly separated between the haves and the have-nots, it has evolved significantly. In a zero-sum system, status was a limited resource, and having it meant that others had less, or at least less access. This, however, has changed in recent decades.
“Status is no longer reserved for the golden chosen. It is for everyone,” Thompson writes. How can BMW maintain its reputation for exclusivity if its vehicles are commonly driven by middle school math teachers and Applebee’s managers?
Due to the fact that acquiring status is no longer restricted to a small few with the means to do it, it must be obtained through other means. Like rescuing dogs.
Although the term “rescue dog” had been in use for decades, it gained popularity in the 1990s as “no-kill” shelters proliferated across the country.
According to Thompson, “for trend-setters, a dog was no longer a pet.” “It was a mark of distinction. A badge that read, “I am a good person, I care about animals, I am moral, and I am superior to other pet owners.”
He writes that it imparted a new type of prestige unrelated to riches, ability, intelligence, achievement, religious or professional standing.
When people wish to adopt a pet, rescue dogs are the first and, in some places, only option for the majority of households.
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Not only did Sturla’s campaign result in a dramatic reduction in pet euthanasia — from an estimated 17 million per year in the mid-1980s to less than 6 million by 1992 and less than 920,000 by 2021 — but it also increased the number of dog-owning households, which increased by 36% between 2006 and 2020 to 49 million households. 38% of U.S. households have at least one dog now. (Strangely, the percentage of U.S. families with cats as pets, approximately 25%, has not changed considerably over the past decade.)
When people wish to adopt a pet, rescue dogs are the first and, in some places, only option for the majority of households. “More than 230 cities in the United States have passed bans on the sale of dogs and cats bred by professional breeders, whose fortunes have declined as the mutts’ vengeance has become complete,” says Thompson.
In 2017, California became the first state to ban pet businesses, making it unlawful to sell any dog or cat that was not purchased through a shelter, humane society, or rescue organization. The state of New York followed suit last month, and the new law will take effect in 2024.
Thompson writes that adoption of rescues “skyrocketed” during the pandemic. But so increased “the demand for puppies from kennels, with many reporting an increase in sales that led to months-long waiting lists.”
Sturla employed the same tactics that have been used for decades “to sell everything from Cire Trudon candles to Gulfstream jets,” adds Thompson. Sturla claims that this was inadvertent. “Make someone feel terrible, then provide them with something that will make them feel better.”
According to Patti Strand, a woman who represents old-school status in the dog world, this strategy is offensive. Since the 1970s, she and her husband have bred Dalmatians, even developing Merry-Go-Round Dalmatians, one of the breed’s most distinguished bloodlines. Thompson argues that her greatest enduring impact is her “decades-long fight against what she calls negative propaganda against dog breeders.”
She co-founded the National Animal Interest Alliance in 1991 and serves as its president to this day in response to Sturlan’s campaign, which she viewed as a direct attack on individuals like herself. The organization advocates for the breeding industry and counters the media myth that “puppy mill” dogs are morally comparable to sex trafficking.
This worldview didn’t originate on its own. Strand explains that this is the outcome of “very well-executed and sophisticated cause marketing by shelters on behalf of rescues.” These rescue organizations are extremely profitable. Some of the largest organizations have millions upon millions of dollars.
And not all of those funds go toward the welfare of rescue dogs. According to HumaneWatch.org, The Humane Society of the United States had total net assets of $322,3 million in 2020, but less than one percent of that amount went to funding or maintaining shelters.
“They call themselves animal welfare groups,” Strand explains. “I refer to them as animal fundraisers. There have been thirty years of continuous marketing. Everyone has an emotional response to animals, hence the topic and facts have been easily distorted.”
“Because everyone has an emotional response to animals, [animal welfare groups] have been able to easily distort the issue and the facts,” asserts Patti Strand, an old-school dog expert.
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“Rescue groups no longer have dogs to rescue; they’re simply not there,” she says, highlighting a truth that is rarely discussed. Therefore, they have began importing dogs.” Strand claims that 3,900 of the 5,000 shelter canines adopted in Oregon’s Multnomah County (Portland is the county seat) in 2021 came from outside the region, such as golden retrievers imported from Turkey’s alleged shelter “death camps.”
US laws on imported dogs are among the most lenient in the world, Strand continues, partly because “nobody ever thought people would be crazy enough to import street dogs from countries that don’t even have rabies under control.”
The conflict between purebred and rescue dogs continues with no apparent victor. Thompson compares the “pandemic puppy boom” to “the Mac/PC standoff, rival factions with identical interests disputing which side has the more catholic approach.”
Thompson writes that adoption of rescues “skyrocketed” during the pandemic. However, guess what? So increased the demand for puppies from kennels, with several reporting a jump in sales that led to months-long or even years-long waiting lists in the case of a Canadian breeder of “doodles.”
It essentially boils down to what French luxury brand strategists Jean-Noël Kapferer and Vincent Bastien once termed “the fight between elites,” both wanting to “impose their own taste, which is held as superior.”
Thompson argues that it has been more than thirty years since rescue dogs “disrupted an order formerly dominated by purebred aristocracy.” And as he’s experienced firsthand, the moral high ground of rescue dog owners has merely gotten more ludicrous, not less.
He recalls a recent camping trip to Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming, where he spotted a middle-aged woman walking a medium-sized German shepherd. “She is the dog from the bin Laden raid,” the woman proclaimed with pride.
Thompson was perplexed. Her dog was the actual one who took part in the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, who helped take down the century’s most notorious terrorist? The same dog the Post praised under the title “Zero Bark Thirty”?
“Oh, no, no,” the woman corrected herself. “She’s a Belgian Malinois. This kind of dog was utilized during the bin Laden operation. She’s a rescue.”
When Thompson told Strand this story, she was not surprised. She stated, “I’ve seen it several thousand times” with a shrug. It is known as virtue signaling.
Despite the fact that the Wyoming woman did not adopt the bin Laden dog, she believed she had performed an equally altruistic act. Strand states that her cat announced to people, “I’m a good person.” I saved this dog instead of adding to the world’s problems.
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