Like many people, I hear the words "humane society" and I think about abandoned kittens or puppies rescued from certain death and placed in loving homes. I automatically feel the tugs on my heart and wallet.
Needless to say, I was shocked to discover the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has engaged in spreading fear and hysteria in an attempt to eliminate my dearest companions, my wolfdogs. In fact, I learned that ultimately they may want to eliminate all cats and dogs.
To be clear, I'm not talking about the innumerable community-based humane societies throughout the United States whose volunteers are engaged in daily animal rescue and protection work. This one is the Washington, DC, based organization with a $31 Million budget in 19951.
This organization, the big Humane Society of the United States, does not rescue kittens or puppies, but instead is primarily involved in shaping the animal policies in our country.
And the HSUS is at the center of a lobbying effort to ban wolfdogs, sometimes known as wolf hybrids, as companion animals.
With an estimated 300,0002 wolfdogs in the country, this effort to exterminate a particular breed stands to bring enormous grief and heartbreak to hundreds of thousands of animals and their human companions who have done harm to no one.
In a current effort to ban wolfdogs in the state of Virginia, the HSUS sent out "fact sheets"3 urging Virginians to contact their legislatures to ban wolfdogs because they are "unpredictable, destructive, rarely trainable, and adept at escaping." The literature portrays wolfdogs as unpredictable, potential killers and claims that attacks are common-"disturbingly common."
The word "common" evokes the idea of a clear and present danger: why, any day, you or I or our children could be attacked by wolfdogs.
Using "common" with Virginia residents is, to put it kindly, an exaggeration of monumental proportions. No one in Virginia was ever killed by a wolfdog, and the HSUS literature could list only one alleged bite incident. Common? A better phrase might be "scarce as chickens' teeth."
The essence of a fear campaign, a campaign to spread hysteria, is to make people feel that their lives and the lives of their children are in immediate and urgent danger-and this is precisely what the HSUS literature attempts to do.
Well, if we look at the facts as compiled by the Humane Society itself, as well as other sources such as the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), the picture is quite different from the campaign literature.
From 1979-93 in the United States, there were a total of 189 human fatalities as a result of dog bites, according to statistics compiled from the HSUS and CDC by The Wildlife Education and Research Foundation4. The pit bull and pit bull crosses were responsible for 59, or 31%of those deaths. German Shepherds and shepherd crosses caused 22 deaths. These animals were followed by the husky, Rottweilers, and then the wolfdog.
These figures alone do not indicate how potentially "dangerous" a breed may or may not be, for we need also to look at the number of attacks measured against the total number of the breed: that is, what percentage of the animals are likely to attack? Using this measure, the animal protection group, the Guardians of Wildlife, discovered that based on current breed estimates, the wolfdog is less of a threat than pit bulls, huskies, malamutes, German Shepherds and Rottweilers.5
Another study6, by Physician Jeffrey J. Sacks and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, analyzed data from 109 deaths caused by dog bites reported between 1989 and 1994. Sacks and his team noted that certain breeds of dog, most notably pit bulls, Rottweilers and German shepherds, are more often involved in fatal and non-fatal attacks. Apparently, wolfdogs didn't merit a mention. Sacks used data compiled from the HSUS as well as the CDC.
According to a recent study on traumatic deaths of children, presented by Robert Belfer, MD in Pediactrics7, 5,356 deaths to children in 1991 were due to firearms; 165 children and adolescents drowned in bathtubs, while fire and flame accounted for 1314 deaths. According to the Children's Defense Fund, some 2,000 children are killed each year by their parents or primary caregivers.
While the thousands of deaths from child abuse and firearms might be termed tragically too common and demanding of urgent public action, these figures makes the 9-18 deaths per year from dog attacks look like a blip on the charts.
In fact, a mortal threat from any particular breed of dog, including wolfdogs, is rare. That is, no more than a few animals out of every million animals are likely to be "killers."
Children are at far greater risk from their own parents or siblings than by any dog, much less the wolfdog. With some 300,000 wolfdogs in the US, there has been less than one human fatality per year over the past 18 years. The wolfdog is about as "common" a threat to children as the threat of getting struck by lightening while being eaten by a shark.
Certainly, any human death by dog attack is a tragedy. It is also true that almost every fatality could be avoided by adequate socialization and training of the animals and by proper education and oversight. Young children should not be left alone with any dog, and children should be taught how to respect and treat all dogs.
Aside from education, good "dangerous animal" laws applying to all dogs would be quite adequate to handle the small number of incidents that do occur.
The statistics simply verify what the hundreds of thousands of wolfdog owners already know: the wolfdog is no more dangerous than other larger dogs, and if there's a problem, it's generally with the owner.
The wolfdog is a beautiful, graceful, affectionate and special animal with special requirements-it is certainly not the "pet" of choice for every family, since they can require so much time and energy. Most responsible owners know they are more like raising children than "keeping a pet," and they require a great deal of attention, socialization, affection, and care.
Any large canine must be properly socialized, trained and cared for. As the 189 human deaths between 1979-93 show, all large canines need to be treated with respect and caution.
But it is brutally unjust and malicious to select out the wolfdog and use manipulated statistics and scare tactics to call for its elimination.
If the facts show that the wolfdog is no more dangerous than other dogs, why has the Humane Society of the United States targeted the wolfdog? Why would these folks want to wreak so much havoc and concern for hundreds of thousands of owners and their animals who have caused no harm to anyone?
There are many who believe that over time, the HSUS grown into a large bureaucracy that has strayed from its purpose. A recent Washington Post8 article documented the financial and strategic controversies surrounding the organization for the better part of the last decade. (See "The Fur is Flying at the Humane Society")
Its two top officers earn more than $200,000 a year and receive unusual perquisites, such as homes and cars. Many other staff members receive in excess of $100,000 a year.
These are hardly the wages of your average volunteer animal rescue worker, and some ex-HSUS staff have asserted that the society has abandoned its purpose in favor of fund-raising and building its own bureaucracy.
This criticism is echoed by the Council of Better Business Bureaus of US and Canada, which issued an advisory9 in April of this year suggesting the HSUS is overestimating the amount it spends on programs and underestimating the amount it spends on fundraising. According to the BBB, the HSUS is blurring the relationship between fundraising and programs so that it is impossible to tell what is being spent on what. The HSUS failed two of the BBB's Standards for Charitable Solicitations.
In examining the HSUS tax returns10, it is clear the BBB is right. Nearly all the HSUS budget appears to be spent on their Washington, DC operation, with the bulk of it, other than the hefty salaries, going for office-related expenses such as postage and shipping, accounting and legal fees. While it brought in over $36 Million in revenues, the HSUS granted a meager $415,000 in contributions to other organizations, some of which are genuinely working to help animals.
And the wolfdog is certainly an easy target: the mere suggestion that there are "wolves on the streets" is enough to frighten most people. And there are a handful of "horror stories" to make good press, even if the overall picture is not nearly so gory. While reverting to the Big Bad Wolf myth, it is easy to forget that there have been no documented attacks on humans by wild wolves in North America. The wild wolf is shy and does not see humans as prey. And the experience of wolfdog owners-that the socialized animal is generally shy and deferential of people-goes unheard.
In addition, the HSUS has found some allies among some of the pure-wolf centers. A least one such organization, having been forced toward the unwanted role of being wolfdog information and rescue service, has taken a position that wolfdogs should be exterminated.
Further, the wolves and wolfdogs have not yet been certified by the USDA for the rabies vaccine, even though the common wisdom among veterinarians and veterinary scientists is that since wolf and dog are of the same species and are genetically indistinguishable, the vaccine works for all canines. This certification situation allows those who want to exterminate wolfdogs to raise the specter of rabies, even though the threat of contracting rabies from any vaccinated canine, wolfdog or dog, is extremely rare.
Moreover, because the wolfdog is not an official breed and is relatively new compared to established breeds, wolfdog owners are not as well organized and funded as other owners. The opposition to bans is not as strong as the organized breed and kennel clubs.
It seems that as the HSUS has grown into a organization more divorced from real animals, real people and their real concerns, it may be more guided by an ideology that would be foreign to most people.
Over the past few decades, the phrase "animal rights" has come into vogue. Beyond animal "protection" and "rescue," animal rights asserts the rights of animals as equivalent to those of people.
In practice, many people agree with many of the goals of animal rights activists, such as "saving the dolphins and whales," stopping the killing of baby fur seals for fur coats and the cruel experiments on animals in some cosmetics laboratories.
In fact, many of the HSUS leaders fall clearly into the category of those who want to eliminate pets. And they are not ashamed to say that:
With this ideology in mind, a grimmer perspective emerges on the HSUS attack on wolfdogs and wolfdog owners. It appears that the wolfdog "controversy" is being used to drive a wedge into the American habit of keeping companion animals: cats, dogs, ferrets, hamsters or whatever.- The life of an ant and the life of my child should be granted equal consideration.
-Dr. Michael Fox, Vice-President, HSUS, in Inhumane Society, Fox Publications
- Don't breed dogs, don't buy, don't even accept giveaways...
-HSUS CEO John Hoyt in a 1991 speech.
We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding.
-Wayne Pacelle, Director of Government Affairs, HSUS, in Animal People, May 1993, former National Director of the Fund for Animals.
If the wolfdog is banned, why not the Rottweilers, the husky or the German Shepherd? Why not all dogs? If less than one death a year caused by the wolfdog means that it a dangerous and unpredictable animal, what does the 9-18 deaths from all canines mean?
The HSUS may be using the wolfdog cynically, as the easiest target in a broader campaign against companion animals.
The problem with the HSUS strategy is the immeasurable suffering and grief "the extinction of domestic animals" would cause to the millions of American people who do not view their pets as slaves but as loving companions: people who understand and cherish the precious relationships that beings of different species can share.
The powerful traditions and values of having animal companions-which was part of human history long before the beginning of recorded history-may be why it becomes necessary to launch a fear campaign, discarding common sense and facts in the process. The HSUS appears to be approaching the companion animal issue sideways, rather than attempt to press the issue straightforwardly with the American people and risk loss of funding and support.
This is the question and the struggle that wolfdog owners are facing today, and it may be the struggle all dog- and cat-owners face in the future.
2 From the HSUS Fact Sheet: Wolf Hybrids, 1/92.
4 The Wildlife Education and Research Foundation, "Wolf Hybrids: Fact Sheet", Appendix V, 1994.
5 From the Wildlife Guardian, a publication of Guardians of Wildlife, Summer, 1996, page 11.
6 As reported in The Washington Post, Tuesday, June 11 1996; Page Z05
7 Pediatrics, Pediatric News At Your Desktop Volume 1. Number 7 - June 20, 1996
8 The Washington Post, "Animal Protection Group Rattled as Feud Renews a 7-Year-Old Battle," by Tracy Thompson, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, August 14 1996; Page A01.
9 The full Advisory can be found at http://www.bbb.org/council/documents/pas/HSUS.html