I was not even aware that debarking was a legitimate procedure to use on companion animals. I had heard of animals in experimental labs being debarked (and the dogs in question were beagles, so I can see why the lab technicians simply accepted it as a reasonable thing to do) but I had no idea, no idea that a person who purportedly loved their dog would take away his or her voice.
“I probably spend more time and money on my dogs in one year than they have in a whole lifetime,” said Paul, a breeder and dog handler in Catskill, N.Y., who asked that his last name not be used because he did not want to be singled out by activists. “I just hate being labeled as someone who’s cruel because I debark.”
Paul usually has more than a dozen dogs at a time, many of them Shetland sheepdogs, a breed known for excessive barking. He said he has had most of them debarked, and requires his clients to debark theirs before sending them to him for dog shows. He said his dogs have lived long, happy lives, and “none of them are any sadder after being debarked.”
I find it terribly interesting that this man justifies his disabling of his dogs with the argument that he spends a lot of money on them.
I, of all people, know how inconvenient animal habits can be. I live with a floor-pooper. I love my floor-pooper, knew what I was getting into, and have decided that he is worth it. All animals come with some animal still left in them; your choice is to either make that a problem or to accept that what you have is not a human but another form of being altogether, and that there will be miscommunications and certain situations where you have no choice but to accept their otherness.
Thinking about this also brings up debate about cats and declawing. I have one declawed cat; I had no say in that decision. I lived with my mother, and the procedure was a requirement for having a cat in the house. I didn't think much of it as all of our childhood cats had been declawed. The way my mother framed it, clawed cats would result in the complete, unmitigated destruction of our home. Now that I have Mal, whose claws are intact, it's clear that this is not always the case. Sure, his high-speed halts have marked up the sofa, and he's caught me once or twice with a sharp one, but for the most part it hasn't been an issue. Monster, however, still seems to realize her loss nine years later; she has the occasional nervous twitch in her paws that seems to be a momentary shock of nerve pain only quieted by furious licking. And her toes seem sensitive, too; when it's chilly or if she's sitting on something uninsulated she very, very meticulously positions her front paws on the tip of her tail, cushioning them. Amputees get ghost pains, so why wouldn't that happen to cats whose fingertips are amputated?
My brother's cat, though, is another case entirely. Caspian kept his claws for almost two years. He is malicious and violent and temperamental. The family cringes when he jumps on a lap. After constant complaining, my mother finally convinced my brother and had him declawed ("disarmed"). And I have to say: he's changed, and not for the worse. People are more willing to interact with him since the chance of getting mauled is much lower. The other animals aren't afraid to approach him. He actually seems to be happier, now, too, which doesn't make any sense at all. But he's lost his flab and become more talkative, playful and social. He's still sneaky and temperamental, but he's no longer a menace. So does that justify taking away his fingertips?
Despite the occasional cases where these disabling procedures seem to improve relations, I think a NYT reader comment sums up the best thinking on this topic: "Folks, no matter how well intentioned you think you are, please do not take an animal into your life if you cannot accept complete responsibility for it - claws, messes, barks and all." HC, Texas
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