Social media algorithms rightfully get a lot of flak for suggesting content we’re just not interested in. I’ve had to work hard to tell Instagram that I don’t want any content related to a certain TERFy wizard school, or sniping posts about how clean romance is better than spicy romance (or the other way around). And when I set up an IG for my corgi*, I had to spend a lot of time training the algorithm to not show me trainers using outdated dominance theory techniques. But every now and then, the algorithm gets it right, such as when it suggested a post from Kassidi Jones (gingers_naps), who recommended the subject of this book review.
*I’m a millennial, of course my dog has her own Instagram.
Bad Dog by Harlan Weaver is about how the dog rescue industry tends to prop up white supremacist ideas of what a “good home” is for a dog, and as such, who does and does not deserve to have a dog. Spoiler alert: a good home tends to be a white, heteronormative family who owns a house with a fenced yard. With how out-of-reach homeownership is in most areas right now, that probably means you’re upper middle class, too.
Even before I read this book, I was starting to notice the saviorist mentalities prevalent in animal rescue, especially dog rescue. For years I’d been hearing about rescues with impossibly high standards for adopting their pets. Then when I started looking for a dog to adopt in 2022 (having last adopted more than a decade prior), I was struck by the rescues that specialized in rescuing dogs from the “meat industry” in certain other countries, as if we didn’t already have plenty of dogs in need of “rescue” here.
My thinking continued to evolve as the price of everything continued to go up for the last two years, and I saw every shelter in my IG feed (which is quite a bit, as I started following a bunch of them when I was on the lookout for a new dog, and never unfollowed after adopting Emma) get inundated by owner surrenders. The popular narrative was “people are returning to the office and don’t want their pandemic dogs anymore” but the reality was far sadder. Many people could not afford to properly care for their animals, or couldn’t afford a home that would allow them to keep their animals. This reality was born out by many of those same shelters issuing regular pleas for keeping their pet food pantries stocked, so they could help more families feed their pets.
Anyway, however “woke” I already thought I was to the issues in the pet rescue industry, Weaver opened my eyes to even more practices that I had never thought were discriminatory. An easy example: some shelters and rescues require every member of the household to come along for the adoption and sign off on the new pet. On the surface, this makes sense. The shelter doesn’t want someone to adopt a dog only to have the roommate say “no” and then the dog is back in the shelter. But Weaver points out that this policy could discriminate against households where someone works long hours and can’t get to the shelter during their business hours, or where a disability might make it difficult or impossible to leave the house.
Another thing Weaver pointed out was that for a dog, living with their person on the street, spending almost every minute with that person, experiencing new sights and smells and meeting other people and dogs, might actually be a much more enriching life than living in a house while their person leaves for 8-10 hours a day to work.
Our ideas of what makes a good life for a dog are often based on our ideas of what makes a good life for a human, and those in turn are often based on white supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist ideas.
What is especially interesting about Weaver’s book is that he argues that we shouldn’t see care for/about animals as taking away from care for/about humans. In his ideal world, we make decisions and take actions that benefit humans and animals. We try to find more ways to allow low-income people, unhoused people, and people in non-conventional families or living situations adopt dogs and/or keep the dogs they already have. And he suggests that any policies to work towards these goals are informed by two primary things: better understanding of how dogs live, think, and behave; and actually communicating with the people who would be impacted by these policies and learning what they need and want in order to be better pet guardians.
Something I have noticed in the past few years, and have tried to cultivate in myself, is a move towards being more sympathetic towards people who surrender their pets, or whose pets seem neglected. Rather than assuming cruelty or indifference, we can have compassion and realize that if a person is ill, working multiple jobs, out of work, or dealing with any of a number of other factors, they may not be able to give their pet(s) the care they need. If we assume the best of people, and meet them with compassion, rather than villainizing them, then we make it easier for them to make the best decision for an animal, whether that decision is to ask for help keeping their pet(s), or surrendering them to a shelter where they can find a new home.
There are a lot of great ideas in this book and I would love to see more of them getting enacted (I’ve already seen some being put in place here and there, such as vets that serve the unhoused population, and events that offer both free vet care and services for humans). The problem is, this is a very, very, very academic work. There’s an entire chapter about the relationship between queer theory and dogs, and while it was entertaining to see the phrase “butt culture” (referring to how dogs greet each other by sniffin’ butts) used repeatedly in a very academic piece, I feel like the super dense language, theory, and references to even more academic works is going to put off a lot of more casual readers.
That said, I still recommend reading this book. If you can’t parse the more academic stuff about race, gender, and sexuality, skim over it and make sure you dive in to the practical ideas at the end about how we can start to enact change. My hope is that, just as we’re seeing progress being made on things like breed-specific legislation and more use of positive reinforcement based training, the ideas Weaver shares in this book will trickle into the mainstream and be picked up and shared by influencers, journalists, and authors who will share them in plain language and easily digestible nuggets, so that we can all work together to create a better world for dogs and the humans who love them.
Note: As suggested by the title, this book is very much about dogs, and some of the problems discussed (i.e. how pitbulls are perceived differently based on the race and gender of the person walking them) are dog-specific, but I think many of the ideas can be applied to animal rescue, shelters, and pet guardianship in general, in order to encompass cats, rodents, birds, and all other companion animals.
CWs and TWs: This book discusses racism, dog fighting, animal cruelty, and transphobia, but in generally academic terms.
Format and Source: I borrowed a hardback copy of this book from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): All Kinds of Allyship. Weaver uses the term “interspecies intersectionality” a lot in this book. Bad Dog is not just a book about being a better ally to dogs, but to being a better ally to the people who have been traditionally marginalized and left out of dog rescue culture. As someone who personally has much better mental health and quality of life with a dog in my home, I feel like it’s important to make companion animals more accessible to everyone, rather than gatekeeping what a “good home” and a “good family” looks like.
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 13 out of 25 prompts complete. 1 bingo.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 7 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.