Animal Rights: Ownership or Guardianship? Part 1 of 2

Dear Caat,

It is not nec­es­sar­ily bad to be a guardian rather than an owner, except that it is a dilu­tion of the legal rela­tion­ship. I am not a lawyer, but as I under­stand it, the dif­fi­culty is when does the state (the gov­ern­ment) get to step in?

Because the AVMA can pull a vet’s license (sim­i­lar to the sanc­tion process for pulling the license of an MD, a process I am some­what famil­iar with) they are act­ing as the state in that case. The gov­ern­ment, in effect, says only vets know enough about vet­eri­nary prac­tice to reg­u­late each other, so we’ll put the pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tion in charge of when a vet gets to prac­tice, or when they have screwed up so much that they don’t get to prac­tice any­more. (I know this might seem like a tan­gent, but please bear with me.)

If we are only the guardians, and not the own­ers, of our ani­mal com­pan­ions, we do not have the same pre­sump­tion of our right to make choices about their care. A guardian is not pre­sumed to be as informed as the vet, for instance. So not only does the vet trump the guardian, but the pro­fes­sional vet asso­ci­a­tion is try­ing to trump alter­na­tive modal­i­ties out of all prac­tice (by both vets and non-vets) by defin­ing it as not good vet­eri­nary prac­tice, and not good for the animal.

[Please read more of this arti­cle by click­ing the link below the dona­tion button.]

© Denise Schultz 2010

Dona­tions and con­nec­tions from the many to each other,
in even a tiny way, can cre­ate big shifts.
So please share Con­sider This …
with any­one else whom you want to con­sider these con­nec­tions and insights.

Suc­cess of alter­na­tive treat­ment modal­i­ties is not of inter­est to them. They want the power to decide. Period. They con­trol the sys­tem by pick­ing what they do, and only what they do, as what is safe and appro­pri­ate care for our ani­mals. [’They’ refers to the con­ser­v­a­tive AVMA, not the holis­tic Amer­i­can Holis­tic Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine Asso­ci­a­tion (AHVMA).]

In gen­eral, the approach seems to be that they want their style of prac­tice to be the only one allowed, at least in part to keep the money flow­ing only to vets, and not to any alter­na­tive health care prac­ti­tion­ers of ani­mal health care. If the holis­tic vets get caught in the cross-fire, well the AVMA is not fond of that style of prac­tice, so they kind of (ugh) get two birds with one shot. With so much money at stake, do see why the sta­tus of legal guardian of our ani­mal com­pan­ions is not as strong as legal owner of ani­mals? The legal rights of own­er­ship of pri­vate prop­erty are a lot stronger than some other sec­tions of the law, and they are still not strong enough to give us the right to choose the care of our ani­mals. Dilut­ing our legal sta­tus to guardian may be ill advised at this time.

Laws gov­ern­ing humane treat­ment of ani­mals (by their own­ers and oth­ers) are a big step for­ward in ani­mal rights. But the pic­ture is more murky when it comes to chang­ing from being an owner to a guardian. If there was more enlight­ment in vet­eri­nary prac­tice, if vet­eri­nary prac­tice in gen­eral acknowl­edged that there are other health care prac­ti­tion­ers who are not vets, who are extremely valu­able in vet care (say T-Touch prac­ti­tion­ers, or home­opaths) then it would not be such a big deal — it would be easy to legally con­tract with the prac­ti­tioner of your choice to get the help your ani­mal needs.

But right now, the AVMA has a lock on the right to treat your ani­mals, right or wrong. I once had a cat chased by a dog fall 8 feet from a trel­lis to a con­crete patio flat on her back. She badly needed a chi­ro­prac­tic adjust­ment. But I lived in a rural area, and my local vet refused to refer her for treat­ment. The chi­ro­prac­tor can lose their license for treat­ing an ani­mal while not under the super­vi­sion of a vet. My holis­tic vet lived 60 miles away over a lot of curvy, hilly, bumpy back roads. I couldn’t put my cat through that trip even once, to get her to a chi­ro­prac­tor, let alone drive her home over it after she had received a treat­ment. She didn’t get the help, because I did not have access to a holis­tic vet. So we really need a law which gives us more power over the care of our ani­mals, not less. Prefer­ably a fed­eral law, which would trump what the AVMA is doing state by state.

Per­haps you would like to invite Amer­i­can Humane or a sim­i­lar author­ity to com­ment on this. What I have stated above is my opin­ion, and it is not a legal opin­ion, or even a par­tic­u­larly well-informed one, just the small por­tions of the sit­u­a­tion of which I am aware. Mainly I encour­age us again to con­cen­trate on what we want to cre­ate. It is not enough to ‘face the facts’ – that just gives us more of the same. We need to envi­sion some­thing much bet­ter than what we have, and keep our eyes on the prize.

© 2009 Denise Schultz www.deniseschultz.com

If you would like to see part 2 of this arti­cle, please click here.

An ear­lier ver­sion of this mate­r­ial appeared on Caat’s Spir­it­Caat forum. She has put together a ter­rific resource here for peo­ple inter­ested in ani­mals and ani­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Give her a click!  Scroll down to the Paw­sTalk Ani­mal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Forum. 

© Denise Schultz 2009

Dona­tions and con­nec­tions from the many to each other,
in even a tiny way, can cre­ate big shifts.  
 So please share Con­sider This …
with any­one else whom you want to con­sider these con­nec­tions and insights.