Run, Spot, Run Quotes

“If you balk at the idea that dogs could be bred like pigs, I’m sorry to disabuse you. Dogs and pigs alike are treated as breeding livestock. The animals are made to have as many young as possible. The babies are taken away at a young age so that they can be sold and a new breeding cycle can begin. The animals never have real sex—that is, sex when and with whom they choose; rather, females are tied up so they can be mounted or, more often, they are artificially inseminated. In commercial breeding operations, and also in many small-scale or backyard breeding outfits, dogs are treated, like the sows and their piglets, as units of production and their sole function is to bear young for profit. All they do is bear one litter after another, until (usually at the age of four or five) they are spent. At which point they are no longer of value and are killed. Taken together with the spay/neuter picture, what we have is rather bizarre: an enormous population of eunuchs and virgins, and a small population of dogs who live their entire meagre existence as breeders, as part of a puppy production line.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“I know that market value is a repulsive accounting of somebody’s worth, and many of us would be unable to put a monetary value on the worth of our animal companions, but the pet industry is willing and able. And animals are cheap. Lee Edwards Benning’s 1976 book The Pet Profiteers called out the industry, and consumers, for what could only be viewed as irresponsible buying habits. We are impetuous and unknowledgeable and spend more time choosing a pair of shoes than a pet. The reason for this may be quite straightforward: we can afford to be impetuous because animals are cheap. We choose our shoes more carefully because they are considerably more expensive.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“There is a tendency to oversimplify the issue of spay/neuter and to promote the essential benefits without recognizing that our animals do suffer some harm, even if it is only the harm of deprivation—the harm of having their sexual and reproductive experiences stolen from them. It is possible to take this argument to the extreme and assert that we should never interfere with something as basic as sexuality and reproduction. Good stewards would allow their animals to exist in a “natural” state. The problem here is that our companion animals have no “natural” state; as domesticates, they are artifacts of human manipulation, and human control over the processes of reproduction is at the heart of domestication. As Karla Armbruster notes in her essay “Into the Wild,” we cannot simply hand control for reproduction back to our companion animals; this would be an abrogation of our responsibility to them. But we owe it to them to acknowledge their losses.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Pets are not eaten (usually), but they feed our souls.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Animals are not genderless objects. “He” and “she” are vast improvements over “it.” “Who” is more fitting than “that” or “which.” (So, it isn’t what you are buying at the pet store, but who you are buying.)”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“A common misconception is that pets have easy lives. They don’t have to do any work to find food and shelter or to protect themselves from harm. But making life easy for captive animals doesn’t do them the great favor we might imagine. Providing them with appropriate challenges affords them opportunities to put their functional competencies to work, to engage in their full range of behaviors, and to engage their intelligence.1 And, in fact, various studies show that animals like to work and will engage in work for a reward, even if the reward is otherwise available for free. “Agency” has recently entered the vocabulary of animal welfare science and captures an important element of what animals in captivity need.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“I’m focusing here on dogs because this is where almost all of the research and exposés lead us. But of course puppies aren’t the only pet animal being bred and brokered and sold for profit; they are just the most high profile. There are kitten mills, too. And rabbit mills. And the many other animals who we keep as pets—the rats, hamsters, and geckos—don’t just materialize out of thin air; they come from a mother somewhere, who has been intentionally bred so that humans can make a profit selling her babies (see chaps. 38, “Cradle to Grave,” and 39, “A Living Industry”).”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“In Sweden, only about 7 percent of pets are desexed, and in Norway, it is currently illegal to desex a healthy animal.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Massive round-ups of strays have been replaced by daily intake and elimination, the large crate full of dead dogs replaced by a steady trickle of bodies. Euthanasia has become assembly-line work, performed by an army of euthanasia technicians and animal control officers. The mass killing of animals is no longer a public spectacle as it was that day in 1877 along the banks of the East River. It is all but invisible to pet owners, who therefore don’t have to feel discomfort or moral outrage. The slow bleed of our shelter system is one of the saddest aspects of our pet obsession.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Often we jump to the conclusion that a dog or cat who doesn’t like to be petted is cranky or unfriendly, but this isn’t necessarily true. They might just like more personal space. Ani-mals need the chance to set their boundaries and say no, just as we do. This is difficult when you are on a leash, or held in someone’s arms, or are in a tiny cage.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“I recently asked a veterinarian friend how he thought about our relationship to companion animals. “They are slaves—chattel slaves,” he said breezily. I was astonished and irked by the nonchalance of his proclamation. But as I thought about it afterward, the reason his statement bothered me so much was that he had touched a nerve—had captured something I find uncomfortable about our relationship to pets. They are here to serve us.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Yet still, beneath all the marketing and social construction of attitudes and desires and shopping habits, there is a deep yearning for connection. The main reason people seek the company of pets must be psychological: animals make people happy and satisfy a basic urge to tend, to love, to bond. “Companion animals,” write Henri Julius and colleagues, “may satisfy the need of individual humans for a reasonably compassionate partner . . . whom they can care for and attach to, at comparatively low ‘social costs.’ For example, cats and dogs do not argue verbally and are less demanding in many respects than a human partner.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Some of this diversity in animal feeling is surely related to enculturation (we in the United States tend to love dogs and be disgusted by the thought of eating them; other cultures farm dogs like we do pigs and relish the thought of grilled dog with hot chili sauce).”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Emotional attachments to and functions of animals in human families are highly variable — and not always positive. Some family pets are surrogate children, some are partners, some are tangible property, some are unpaid employees, some are scapegoats, and some are targets for emotional and physical or sexual violence.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets