Speaker 1: Live. This is Pet Life Radio. Let's Talk Pets.
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a very interesting show today. We're going to talk to
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welfare and different legal implications. Something yeah, we don't usually
talk about, but it's there and it's important for you
to know about. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back everyone. I'd like to welcome Sherry Hines. She
is a professor at the University of Georgia Law with
a focus on animal welfare. Welcome Sherry.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
be here.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to have you. Can you share a little
bit about your background for our listener.
Speaker 5: I'm sure absolutely. I have to be honest, I never
thought in a million years, so when I went to
law school that I would be able to specialize on
animal law. I'd always said that I volunteered with animals
and I worked with people. But here I am now
as a professor at UGA, and one of my main focuses,
as you said, is animal law. In fact, I'll be
teaching a class next year called Crimes against Animals that
I'm developing. In terms of my background, I graduated from
law school and worked as a public defender, so the
typical if someone can't afford representations, I won't be appointed.
That was me for about six and a half years,
so I've had a good exposure to the criminal defense
side of things. Following that, I worked for the Institute
of Continuing Legal Education, so I cut a little of
the education focus and then the vast majority of my
time so about seven and a half years. Immediately prior
to coming to UGA, I was able to work in
the Athenstark County Attorney's Office, which was a fantastic opportunity
to start leveraging kind of my interest in animal law.
Because I was able to serve as then advising our
animal services department. I was able to prosecute all the
animal ordinance violations that occurred in Athenstark County, to assist
in animal cruelty prosecutions, and to help with dangerous dogs
and legislation drafting. So specifically, I was able to help
with T and R program for cats. So it's been
a really fun ability to sort of shift my focus
to something I'm so passionate about. In terms of more
of a personal history, I have always been around animals
because my dad was a vet growing ups and we
were primarily a cat household, although we had lots of
other animals. I have volunteered with wildlife. I did that
for a while because, as I'm sure many of your
listeners can understand, sometimes it can be challenging going to
shelters and knowing that you can't save them all. So
working with wildlife was a little bit of a break
from that. But since then, so since about twenty sixteen on,
I've focused pretty much all of my volunteer activity with
companion animals, so I've served on the board of multiple nonprofits,
animal related nonprofits. I'm currently on the board of the
Madison Older Animal Shelter, which is a small rule shelter,
and we're very much a working board. I was the
president for five years. I've also served as a foster
parent and a volunteer for lots of different local animal
rescue groups, originally focusing a lot on cats. That that
was how I got involved as a cat volunteer, but
my husband has gradually turned me into just as much
of a dog person as a cat person. So I
really I'm one of those people that, like I would
hug an alligator if someone gave me one and I
was fairly confident it wasn't going to bite me.
Speaker 2: No, let me ask you about this. Thank you for
sharing your background. Yeah, thank you for coming on the
show today. I have a question because my background is
in business. So the only law class I took was
business law, so very different. But that is not too
common unless I missed something researching, it seemed to be
not very common. You know, animal law, animal welfare. Is
that something new?
Speaker 5: That's right? It is something that's newer. There's certainly some
places where it's been established for a long time, Like
Vermont has a really good law school that's been focusing
on us for a long time, and there's certainly others
across the nation. But you're right that animal law is
a specialty, is not something typically that people will go
in and only practice animal law. And they are good
reasons why animal law as a specialty is just now
sort of coming forward, And I think one of the
main ones is that animal law tends to touch on
lots of different practice areas that are not necessarily combined
except as it relates to animals. So animals are considered property,
even though we all love them and we think of
them as our children. Sometimes animals are legally the same
as a car, except that you have to feed it,
you have to take care of it in a different way.
So there are property interests related to divorce and wills
and states and things like that that are kind of
one niche area. But then you certainly have like an
agriculture of the animal law field, where people are worried about,
you know, farming and human practices. Then you have issues
related to criminal law, which of course is my focus.
We're talking about enforcement and animal protection. So there's just
a lot of different facets and a lot of times
the attorney practice is one isn't going to practice another.
And so that's why you won't come across many people
who practice solely in this area, but you will come
across a lot of attorney of attorneys who have to
deal with this in some form of fashion, you know,
from time to time in their career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see the rarity and why it's such
a specialization. We have a few topics I want to
talk about. Let's talk about pet safety and legal considerations
during holiday adoption surges. This is something that is like
a throw on to my side, drives me crazy. So
during the holidays, shelters always see a spike and adoptions.
So from a legal and welfare viewpoint, what risks do
you see with that trend.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a challenge, right, because shelters want animals to
move out because at least they have a good chance,
one hopes of a successful outcome outside of the shelter,
particularly when we're talking about open admission shelters that are
constantly capacity and really struggling to manage that population. On
the other hand, we certainly know that there are a
lot of people who impulse adopt animals during holidays at
the end of the year, around Christmas, and that a
lot of those animals may come back to us, you know,
in the next month to a year, when people realize
that maybe they haven't thought through that decision.
Speaker 2: That's what bothers me, the fact that they al said
they'll adopt, you know, it's puppy and a kitten if
they grow up, any dogs and cats, and people don't
think it through about the dedication, the expense, the fact
that you know, cats scratch things. You know, people they
just think, you know, oh, my little daughter, my little
son wants a little cat, or I'm bored, I want
a cat, little cat, and they don't think it through.
And I just think it's true for the cat to
have to go or the dog they think they're gone
and forever home. Then they're going back. And sometimes this
happens multiple times, but it seems to definitely beg around
the holidays.
Speaker 5: You're absolutely right, and I think the best thing that
shelters can do is to try to educate owners or
adopters and make sure that to the best of the
shelter's ability, these people appear to have really thought through
It's one of the challenges with adoptions that like pet
stores around the holidays, and I think some shelters actually
decide not to do those because it's so easy for
someone to impulse adopt at a store, as opposed to
actually thinking, yes, I want an animal and making it
considered choice. I'm actually going to the shelter to do that.
This is one more step to try to reduce that impulse.
You know, theoretically shelters have adoption contracts, but I think
there are a lot of challenges to trying to enforce those.
And at the end of the day, we don't want
to try to force families to keep animals they don't
want that they're not going to care for. So it's
not really a good legal avenue to try to stop
people from returning. It's more about educational on the front end.
Speaker 2: Right right, education on the fun end and have them
think it through. I know some shelters have you, you know,
complete a form and then you cannot adopt out that
same day you have to come back.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's a fantastic method to try to make sure
that people are serious. It's one that some shelders don't
use when they are usually at such high capacity and
they desperately need the space. But to your point, if
you're making space today, but you know that there's a
good chance or adoptions are going to fail and they're
going to come back you in a couple months, that's
not really a good solution at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not. I told you what infuriates me, what
infuriates you about when people are gifting puppies and kittens
during the holidays.
Speaker 5: I think the thing that's most troublesome to me is
the surprise gifts of animals. No one should ever receive
a puppy, a kitten, or even like adult animal as
a surprise gift. I mean, I understand if it's a
small child, that's a different thing. But we have a
lot of people who come to our shelter saying, I
want to adopt a cat for my mom. Your mom
needs to come and pick that animal out. I think
people forget that when we're talking about cats, it's, you know,
hopefully a fifteen to twenty plus year commitment, and dogs
it's hopefully at least a ten year commitment. And so
those are not things that should be sprung upon someone
as a surprise. Those animal human bonds are really important
and really individual and people need to respect that. Yes,
animals are legally property, but they are very different in
going and buying your mom a teav for Christmas, and
they need to be treated differently, more carefully.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, And I also know that some shelters are
even kind of adverse to adopting out the you know,
cats to older people unless they know that there is
somebody to take care of the cats. You know, somebody
that wants to adopt a had that's eighty ninety. What's
going to happen if scofferd It's something happens to the person.
So they want people to really think it through. So
something happens to you, is there someone else in the
family that's going to take care of this, you know,
your cat.
Speaker 5: I think that's a really important point too. It occurred
to me to say one thing because on the earlier topic,
the shelter that I work for, for example, we will
not adopt out if someone says it's a gift. So
that's one way I think shelters can combat that. But
to your point about you know, adopting to people who
are older, I think that's a really challenging conversation to have,
because on one hand, I think we want to really
be clear that shelters are not discriminating as people based
on their age. I mean, realistically, any of us could
be hit by a bus tomorrow, ranks, or we might
have underlying health problems. The same time, you were absolutely
right to recognize as a practical reality that when people
are adopting, you know, a very young animal that hopefully
will live for a decade or two, that planning for
the care of the animals and really important. And I
think this is pretty common, or it should be common
with other types of animals for instance, like certain turtles parrots,
like they frequently outlive their owners because they have a
long lifespan. But I think you're right that we need
to have greater conversations about what is your plan for
this animal so it does have a safety net if
something does happen to an owner.
Speaker 2: Right, So it's just planning. It just makes sense, just planning.
So right, Okay, we're going to take a break. I'm
going to be right.
Speaker 5: Back, real people, real stories.
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Speaker 2: Welcome everyone, We're talking to Sherry Hines, professor of law
specializing in animal welfare. Okay, here's another topic I wanted
to talk to you about. What are the dangers of
no kill shelter branding and their legal implications. So, for example,
no kill is really powerful in this shelter world. But
can shelters really claim to be no kill or are
there exceptions other than you know, a cat passing away,
unfortunately is not killed. It could be that there's some
cats that are sick and that are going to pass away.
That's not the same as killed. But what about those
shelters that are no kill? Do they have certain legal
implications that they have to follow so that you know,
if you're going there to adopt, no cats are euthanized.
It's just that's you know, how they work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think this is probably one of the most important,
if not the most important conversations that's happening in the
animal rescue world right now. So I really appreciate you
asking me about it. I think the first thing to
say to kind of the question you just asked is
there's no legal designation of no kill. Certainly no official
legal designation, but what we all have kind of established
in the community that it means is that a rescue
group or a shelter doesn't euthanize more than ten percent
of its population at any given year. And it makes
sense for those of you who are listening who are
upset to hear that they do have this ten percent
google room. It makes sense because there are times when
rescue groups, despite their best efforts, do need to euthanize
an animal. For instance, an animal that is you know,
horribly ill, you know, has cancer, even though it's an
end of the life euthanasia, if they're properly recording the
outcomes for their animals, it is still considered a euthanasia. Additionally,
sometimes rescue groups take on animals with really severe behavioral issues,
and despite everyone's best at their efforts at training or medication, whatever,
this animal you know, maybe is bitten too many folks.
We even had a cat, believe it or not, that
was too aggressive and that would attack people, especially if
a cat's declaude right. So it's just one of those
situations where there does need to be some little room
for organizations when they have animals that they just can't
safely continue to house or adopt out. But I think
the bigger problem is that we really shouldn't be using
the words kill or no kill to describe shelters or
rescue groups. And I agree with you. It's a very
powerful term. And the reason they do use it is
because factually it's true, right they uthianize less than ten percent,
but also because they know the public will support no
kill shelters or rescue groups before they will support kill
shelters or groups because of a perception that you know
the shelters, you know the animals are going to die
the shelter, or other other concerns people have.
Speaker 2: Okay, Lana Claire, by one thing, I don't agree that
aggressive cats should be killed. I know that some cats
will be excessively aggressive once they are declawed, especially baiting,
which is what most people think of when they say
my cat's aggressive. Cat's biting. And that's when cats are
declawed because they have no other way of defending themselves.
So and then when you mentioned the ten percent, it
seems like I guess in generalizing the no killed ten
percent are cats and dogs that are there's a small
chance of them making it once they're adopted, they're sick
or they're extremely aggressive. I even had a situation in
my family member adopted a dog, but it wasn't I
don't recall they went to it. They went to a shelter.
This was years ago, and the dog was from and
I know we're catituted, but this is a dog story
you guys can relate. So this dog was adopted from
the streets of I think Puerto Rico during a hurricane.
The dog had never been in a home. The dog
literally bit through I don't even know how he did it,
a metal cage, chewed up wooden blinds, and then it
wasn't the fact that things were destroyed. It was the
fact that this poor dog is going to be injured
because it wasn't somebody home, you know, twenty four seven,
but there was somebody home enough, and the dog would
need intense, intense training. Now, the shelter I found in
this situation because I growed my family member that shelter
was at fault because they didn't disclose this. They wanted
to adopt the dog out, but my family I would
have said, this is not the dog for us, because
we don't have the time to put in to really train.
I mean, this dog needed intense training, was never in
a home. Actually, the dog went nuts, broke through a
metal you know. Was they were great training the dog
create train, chewed up wooden blinds. Then they broke through
again and chewed something else, and they feared for the
dog's safety, so they brought the dog back. I mean,
that's an extreme situation, and I normally would go nuts
on a situation like this. If you know, to my family,
I'm going to say, well, we adopted, but we returned.
But in this case, the shelter should have disclosed this.
Speaker 5: That's right, And I think that's the pressure, right no
kill shelters want to adopt out animals, and everybody of
course gets into this because you want to save animals.
But the reality is that there are some animals that
just really cannot safely be maintained in a house. And
so I think what I really want to emphasize to
your listeners is that instead of saying kill or no kill,
what is more helpful is to think about open and
take facilities versus closed and take facilities. So to be clear,
I think there's value on both sides, Like we need
all of these organizations.
Speaker 2: Can you clarify the difference.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, a closed intake facility or rescue group is
a group that chooses what animals come into their care
so they can select them. They can deliberately, if they
so choose, pick animals that are younger, friendlier, healthier of
desirable breeds, more adoptable. Then open intake facilities which are
ones that commonly have a contract with a local government
or they are in fact a government run shelter, and
they exist to take in every single animal, at least
of a certain species right that needs to come into
a shelter. And a lot of people disparage the open
intake shelters because of necessity, they do have to perform euthanasia,
whether that's because a dog got hit on the road
and desperately needs to be euthanized for humane reasons, or
whether that's because they are overflowing with animals and they
don't have the space and you can't humanly warehouse animals indefinitely.
But those open intake shelters are incredibly important. I think
what the data shows is that if animals don't have
a place to come in, then that's where we have
lots of roaming feral animals. At here where I live,
we had a dog pack, just a roaming group of
dogs that nobody cared for, that attacked to an older
couple and mauled them to death. Oh my god. So
there are very real harms to having large numbers of
animals roaming because animals their owners didn't have a place
to take them, or concerned citizens didn't have a place
to take them, even if it's just concerns about rabies
and the spread of disease, right and so, open and
take facilities give people the ability to bring that stray
dog or that stray cat, or even I'm a terrible person,
right and I took these animals in and I just
don't want them anymore because they have feleaves or whatever.
You know, I'm not trying to pass judgment, but just
you know, you've decided you don't like animals, you don't
want these anymore, and you want someone else to take
responsibility for them. Shelters exist because at the end of
the day, it is better for someone to have a
place to bring these animals where they can get humane care,
then to have them abandoned or mistreated or God forbid,
you know, actually abused or starved, et cetera, in homes
where they're not wanted.
Speaker 2: I absolutely agree, because I think cats are more likely
to be well, I don't know. I don't know whether
cats are more likely to be abandoned or dogs, but
I mean one of my cats was abandoned and that's
how I got Dennis, my first cat. I think people
are more likely to think that, you know, the cat
can survive out, you know, outside, like so many outdoor
cats and little feral cat communities.
Speaker 5: You're absolutely right. I think it's just more socially acceptable,
at least in the South and Georgia where I live,
for cats to be allowed to roam at large and
for dogs to be contained. Although I will say I
technically live in a pretty rural county where there are
a lot of people who own you know, ten acres
or they have farms, and they do allow dogs to roam.
The downside of that is that roaming dogs lead to carrecks,
They lead to small pet animals being killed because those
dogs naturally have a prey drive, right you know. And
of course we see these larger risks of feral dogs
packing up. But there's all sorts of negative outcomes that
can happen by animals running at large, And so the
real issue is not the open and take shelter or
what people brand is the kill shelter. They are not
the bad people, right. They did not get into this
work because they want to euthanize animals. The real problem
is that we have a serious pet overpopulation problem in
the United States, especially in the South, and we don't
have laws that require speynouter and so people are allowed
to irresponsibly breed their animals and then basically dump them
either like literally outside dump them to be someone else's
problem or to pass away, or they take them to
the animal shelter, which is a better choice of course,
but it's still a huge negative impact on the taxpayers.
A county that Lisa Milett, who's now the state director
of Animal Fair and Vermont. She and I've been working
with Takab County here in Georgia, and they they estimate
if they spent eleven million dollars last year on caring
for just unwanted animals in their shelter system, and that
doesn't count capital expenses. So I think people don't realize
what a huge economic burden it is on governments trying
to manage these problems.
Speaker 2: It is, and there's a lot of resources for spay
and neuters, so it should just be done. Okay, we
have another topic, so let's talk about First Amendment issues
in public comments and online spaces. So how does the
First Amendment apply with regards to shelters?
Speaker 5: Sure, so, as a general principle, the First Amendment protects
people's right to speak freely about almost any topic. So
they want to speak about and where it happens and
I should sorry, let me back that up. As a
general principle of the First Amendment protects in individual's rights
to speak about just about any topic they want to
s speak about from interference by the government as a
general rule or some employers. Right. So the reason that
it interacts with shelters is that shelters are commonly and
by this I'm referring to those open intake shelters are
commonly government run facilities. So if you have a shelter
that is a government entity, then they have to follow
all the same rules protections for individuals related to the
First Amendment. And where that most commonly comes into play
is imagine you have a shelter that is struggling, doesn't
have enough resources, they have too many animals. Volunteers are
upset with how things are being managed understandably, and volunteers
begin posting on that shelter of social media page or
on the government's social media page, demanding action, you know,
talking about the bad things that they alleged or happening
at the shelter. You might imagine that a government employee's
first instinct might be to hide those or delete those
posts because they're negative. Unfortunately, the First Amendment as a
general rule doesn't allow them to do that, or maybe
just say fortunately, right, we want people to be able
to speak when the government creates what we would call
a limited public forum where they can do that, and
social media accounts are such a forum. So for those
who are living in communities where maybe there is some
tension and you're trying to speak up about issues that
you see and trying to affect change, I think one
thing to remember is that the First Amendment does protect
that kind of speech. Now, I will say it gets
a little bit more complicated if you are in a
government employee who wants to speak up about concerns, is
that's outside of my scope today?
Speaker 2: I think in these days you have to be careful
whatever you say, because there's I mean, more than ever
my personal opinion, and I'm not going to get political,
but there seems to be more frivolous lawsuits than ever
and settling to that have nothing to do with what
is right or wrong. It's just it'll be cheaper to
just settle. So let's just settle just a lot of
frivolous lawsuits. So do you think the shelters should just
restrict people from social you know, media comments, because there's
a lot that gets twisted out there with social media.
Speaker 5: Also. Yeah, the general advice, and I can't give it
any legal advice, but the general rule is that if
you are an organization, particularly government organization, that's going to
create a social media page, which are fundamentally designed to
allow interaction with the community, you do need to allow
them to post just about anything that they choose to post.
There are some limits, like they can't post pornography, you know,
but you'd be surprised even hate speech is actually protected
by the First Amendment. So the best advice that I've
ever heard is, either if you're that uncomfortable with the
public possibly making comments, then don't have the social media
page at all, or at least disable the feed. But
then that's what it defeats the purpose of having the
social media account to begin with, right, So I think
the better approach is to sort of try to counter
things with information. Right if someone posts something that's negative,
you can respond and say, thank you so much for
this bringing this concern to our attention. Can we have
a private conversation with you or we'll send you a
private message to discuss this further, Because that way, at
least you're showing that your responsive, that you are paying
attention to the community. And maybe you don't have the
best answers right now, or maybe you are working through
some challenging things, but you're trying to be accountable to
your community and you're trying to make improvements. I think
what we have seen here in Athens is that your
volunteer community and those people who are most concerned can
also be your most powerful advocates. So I would encourage
shelters to think more about trying to work with advocates,
even if understandably advocates can sometimes be a little bit
too dramatic. I think it's probably the best way to
desgrab that ter be a little bit unprofessional in their communications,
but working with them is always the better outcome in
my experience, if your goal is to help the animals, right,
these are people who are coming at it because they care,
not because they're bad actors. And I think that's an
important thing for governments to remember.
Speaker 2: Right. So inconclusion, because we're almost out of time. So
in conclusion, if you could recommend one legal change. Now
we're heard globally about you're based in Georgia, but animal
welfare we're mostly talking about, probably the US, where most
of our listeners are. So in conclusion, if you could
make one legal change that would improve animal welfare in
the US, what would that be.
Speaker 5: Unquestionably, it's mandatory space hooter.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't want to want to recognize that
there may be need to be exceptions, like an animal
that for medical reasons can't be spade, a neutered, or
a legitimate reputable breeder. Right. I'm not trying to get
rid of, you know, the wonderful breeds that we have
in the United States and elsewhere, but mandatory spain neuter
is the absolute best way to address peedover population, and
that is the number one problem for animal welfare in
the United States. What I always like to tell people
is that pet overpopulation, the way we currently address it
is like bailing out a sinking chip over and over
and over again. We cannot adopt our way out of
this problem. So the best way to do it is
to resolve it at the source, which is to plug
that leaking boat by making sure that people have to
span youard of their pets so we don't continue to
have this over overwhelming pet overpopulation problem.
Speaker 2: So Jari, thank you so much for coming onctitude. Where
can people find out more information about the legalities of
involving animal welfare?
Speaker 5: Sure, So at the University of Georgia Law School, we
have what's called the Pause Clinic, which is the Practical
Animal Welfare Skills and that is a great sort of
starting base to find some information and will very soon
have a series of videos. There's a couple that are
already posted that describe a lot of the national challenges
that we're dealing with related to animal welfare. That website
is https colon slash slash Pause dot Law dot UGA
dot edu. And if you'd like me to say it
without that.
Speaker 2: So pause dot law dot U, g a UGA dot edu.
That's right, okay, and I'm pretty sure we can have
that link on the page for this episode. Again, thank
you so much for coming on Caatitude, and thank you
for all you do for the animals.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: I hope everyone enjoyed this episode so informative. I want
to thank Sherry Hines for coming on Catitude and sharing
a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much. Thanks to
my cats all Rescues, Dennis, Charlotte and Mollie. Thanks to
my listeners of Tatitude. I appreciate your listenership so much,
and of course a huge thank you to my producer,
Mark Winter for working his magic and making every show
sounds incredible. Now, remember who's the attitude have
Speaker 4: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on petlight
Radio dot com.