Okay, I’m reading frustration- pointed at me- between the lines of what you’ve written. I’m going to drop the MrDebatePants persona I’ve adopted thus far and speak to you human-to-human. Regardless, I will still be making every effort to be respectful despite the difference in opinion we are having here. I hope and trust you will let me know when you feel disrespected and afford me the opportunity to correct it. /persona

Yes, I have. I was a kennel technician in a veterinary office for about 8 months. I was homeless at the time. Let’s see, this was… late 2020? early 2021? Somewhere around there. It was a nice deal. The shelter and the vet had some sort of arrangement with the government that they could basically lease out their tenants, pay them less than minimum wage. It’s a win win win, because the vet gets cheap labor and a tax break, the shelter gets some sort of kickback from the government, and I get shafted on pay and come “home” smelling like dogshit every night, much to the dismay of the other men with whom I was sharing a bunk/room, considering the extreme dysfunction of our showers and laundry.

I didn’t care. I was working with animals. Would you believe I have always been much better with animals than people? At first it was nice enough- take the dogs out three times a day in the remarkably well appointed attached private park specific to the vet’s office. Clean up their feces, feed them, later I was entrusted with medication and grooming tasks. The owner of the place, a retired vet, took great care to make sure there were facilities for the care of homeless dogs and cats. Humane, empathetic, I thought. And I guess, yes, actually it was, in comparison to the nothing he could have otherwise done. But it was also depressing. Not just for me. For them.

Prudence. A beautful, sweet 6-7 year old malamute/pyrenees who was in our care after being discovered in a crate not even big enough for her to stand up in. She had been sitting in her own filth, unrelieved, for an unknown but extended period of time. She was only discovered when the elderly demented man who was supposed to be her caretaker finally passed. He had been feeding her, and nothing else. Prior history unknown. She was going to be written off as a lost cause and euthanized. I begged to be allowed the opportunity to attempt to rehabilitate her. The vet kind of rolled her eyes and I guess decided it would be a teachable moment for me. So she went ahead. And I did. I took her on walks with an improvised sling, bearing most the weight from her hips on my shoulders. She would kind of kick the air with her back as we walked. Before long her front legs were strong enough that I could start easing her weight down a bit, lengthening the strap little by little. She would always be panting like mad when we got back in, but also happy in that dog way. About two months of this treatment and she was standing and walking short distances on her own. And she loved walking, so so much. I’ve never met a dog more happy to just be walked. I know, I know. All dogs like walks. This dog loved walking. Just the act thereof. I don’t do it or her justice in this description. She didn’t care one iota about being fixed. She was taken to a farm upstate (literally, I checked) and enjoyed another year of life before developing hip dysplasia severe enough that even she didn’t want to walk anymore. She was humanely euthanized, and I have every reason to believe she consented to that procedure. If I had not been there, simple and naive enough to actually try where the “professional” had given up before even starting, she would have been simply murdered by the same procedure. And nobody would have seen any problem with it.

Ricky. 2-4 year old boxer mix who had spent too long on the streets and was badly socialized to both humans and animals. I was warned about ricky when he came in for all of those reasons- aggressive, snappish, foul mannered, defensive, food guarding, all the hits. People mistrusted him without ever meeting or interacting him because of his history. I’m ashamed to say, so did I. One day we were feeding and I had accidentally forgotten to start the dishwasher for their bowls, so we used paper bowls instead. I put out the food and came back about twenty minutes later (far too long with paper, I should have known) to find Ricky chewing his bowl to shreds. I said, exasperated “Ricky…” and he looked kind of ashamed, in that way that some dogs will. I opened the cage and reached out my hand and- he recoiled. He absolutely drew back in the expectation that I was about to hit him. I tell you, my heart broke for him in that moment. I sat down next to him instead of cleaning up the pieces and just loved on him for a while. And he needed that, so so badly. I guess so did I. He pressed himself into me and I whispered that it’s okay and he’s a good boy and please don’t chew up your bowl. From then on he and I were best friends, and he seemed to come around to the rest of the staff quickly thereafter, too. If things had turned out differently, he’d be in my care right now here at home. But they didn’t. I liked ricky, you see, and he liked me. And he was extremely jealous of my attention. I was trying to work closely with him to socialize and was going to begin muzzled contact with other dogs soon, but… One day I had him out in the park. It has a few fenced off areas for holding troubled dogs away from the main area. I was in on one of my off days, playing in one such area, tug toy, fetch, that sort of thing. And he was being such a good boy… until another dog who was playing in the main area wandered over and saw that I was playing with toys and he wanted to play toys too and ricky didnt like that so he bit the other dog through the fence. Hard. And refused to let go. And tore his lip open. we stuck the needle in his arm and he died, knowing what was happening to him. I held him, and I tell you I wept like I never did before or since.

Have I seen the before and after? Yes, I have. I have seen dogs come in for humping the pillows go home not wanting to hump things anymore. I have seen the dog who got out because of owner negligence come home and have a litter of puppies they couldnt afford so they just give them away to god knows who without worrying too much about neutering, they’re just puppies, someone else will take care of it, no longer able to have puppies anymore. hooray, another victory. Dogs come in sexually aggressive and leave confused and worried while the staff laughs about the cone of shame preventing them from investigating the stump where there sex once was. Never is any sort of therapeutic intervention even considered. “Dog psychologist? Dont be naive.” Never is it suggested that it might just be the fault of the person nominally responsible. When people get bored or their charge becomes inconvenient, they dump their responsibility onto the street. Never had I seen that illustrated so literally as the day we were outside smoking at the shelter and someone just did a fucking drive by dump off. I guess they saw “shelter” and got the wrong idea. Fortunately I happened to work at the actual shelter they needed and was able to get that poor animal- abused, obviously, and sick- where it needed to be to get some help.

My mother is disgustingly similar to your FIL, except she had just the one dog at the time that I was still talking to her. Walking around whimpering all day long in heat with no way to satisfy her sexual needs. She let that poor girl just bleed on the floor and whine and lay around and yelled at her relentlessly for relentlessly trying to get out. “she knows better than that.” I begged her to please neuter that dog. Repeatedly. Literally on my knees at one point. She thought it was funny. That dog- let’s see, Daisy was her name- did manage to get out one day. And was hit by a car. And died of her wounds. My mom did not go to see her while she lay dying. For many reasons, this high among them, I do not speak to my mother anymore.

I didn’t develop these radical views even from all of those experiences combined. I wanted to adopt a rescue dog. I wanted to know what kind of rights that dog would have. I was shocked, angry and I don’t know the word to adequately express the magnitude of my disappointment because that word just doesn’t quite cut it- but somehow not actually surprised- to find that they have no rights. Animal rights do not exist, at least in america, atleast as far as I was able to find in a quite extensive (though necessarily not exhaustive) search of my state and local district and several other districts in my state and several other states and at a federal level. All “animal rights” legislation is actually a list of how hard you can “work” your animals, what treatments they may not be forced to endure (almost universally, they may not be subject to any treatment that will lead to death or inability to perform their “work”). They are slave codes. Animals are slaves. Legally defined, literally, as chattel. Moveable property. This is my real point. The question about sexual assault, while valid and I think important, is a framing device to get us to here and the larger more important question, “What are we supposed to do about this?”

I had to delete about a paragraph and a half here where I started to get back into MrDebatePants mode, because I told you I wouldn’t do that. There is just one thing I must say as a point of clarity, however: I am not arguing from nature. I understand how you could infer that from what I’ve said, but I’ve never implied it and it forms no part of my argument.

I hope this wasn’t too much. It was a lot, for me at least. Scrolling back up, it’s a lot to look at, too. I haven’t dressed my ideas up or tried to hide anything or tried to make myself sound as smart as I can. It is the plain, ugly, unvarnished truth as I recall it.

Actually, I’m at the character limit, so I bette