A Pet's Proper Place

USA TODAY EDITORIAL

The latest news from the animal front comes from Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court heard arguments this month in a lawsuit filed against the city of Racine by a woman whose dog was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. She's seeking $5,000 for the emotional distress she experienced. Two lower courts ruled that a pet is property and that lawsuits stemming from its death should be limited to its monetary value.

"We are arguing," says Alan Eisenberg, the woman's attorney, "that a dog is a person." But of course a dog is not a person. A dog is an animal.

Pet lovers frequently invest their animals with human virtues: loyalty, dedication, total acceptance and discretion. That's harmless around the house, where pets exist in the kingdom of their owners. But if the court decides that dogs are, in the eyes of the law, more than just animals, it must then conclude that dogs - and other pets that provide companionship - have rights. And from this flows a vast river of nonsense. It would arguably be impossible to spay or neuter a pet without its permission. Indeed, with the possible exception of the garden slug, the deer tick and the mosquito, there is no animal that doesn't suit someone as a pet by inviting the imprint of human qualities. Crows have attitude; squid are intelligent and likable.

The animal rights movement has had success with the argument that pets have intrinsic value beyond livestock or property. Eisenberg says three cities - Berkeley, Calif., West Hollywood, Calif., and Boulder, Colo. - have enacted laws describing a dog owner as a custodian and the dog as a ward, "as though it were a human child." And court cases such as this one are increasingly common.

These initiatives may seem like amusing legal concessions to emotional attachment, but they are not harmless. Equating dogs with children in any legal sense devalues society's concept of children, and there's too much of that as it is.

Animals do not have rights, but humans have a moral obligation to treat them with respect, dignity and kindness. As such, laws against animal cruelty are the essence of humanity. Indeed, they are part of what sets us apart from animals. Asking the courts to abandon that distinction - asking them to consider animals akin to humans - is a junkyard dog of an idea.

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