Pet Rentals

[asterroc]

Ever heard of rental pets? I hadn't either until Dolittler pointed it out. Apparently they're targeting my lovely state next.

I am writing to you today regarding the House act “An Act Prohibiting the Renting of Pets” (H.D. 4864). My name is ***, and I am **occupation** in **location**, and I live and vote in **location**.

Pets are an important addition to our quality of life, and many of us view them as family members. Even Presidential candidates talk about their pets as they promote their candidacy for office. However, as humans it is our job to be stewards for them, as they cannot speak for themselves. Hence I am writing to you today about the disturbing new practice of "rental pets" by companies such as the FlexPets (http://www.flexpetz.com/) and their attempt to make inroads into our state.

Services such as pet-sitting while on vacation and dog-walking during the day while we are at work are important. These services allow the animals customary caretaker to provide care to our animals while we are out of town or unable to do so, while still allowing our animals to live in a stable loving home. A rental pet company on the other hand, treats animals as disposable toys, to be put away (or put down!) when the owner does not have the time or energy for the animal.

Besides such a service shifting the public viewpoint of animals from creatures in our care to commodities, the individuals animals in question do not have stable loving homes, and instead are constantly shipped from one home to another. Imagine if we started renting out human children the same way! Ultimately, a culture that believes in the disposability of pets is one destined to suffer strain on its public and private resources through increased pet abandonment.

I urge you to evaluate “An Act Prohibiting the Renting of Pets” (H.D. 4864) proposed by Massachusetts State Representative Paul Frost, and similar legislature in the Senate, with these cautions in mind. Please ask Rep. Angelo Scaccia and the Senate as well to move “An Act Prohibiting the Renting of Pets” (H.D. 4864) without delay into the appropriate committee. Passing such an act would send a message not only to companies who would exploit our pets in novel ways, it would also serve as a model for our entire country as to how responsible stewardship for pets is best achieved—by rejecting practices which would undermine their stable role in society.

Thank you for your time, and please feel free to contact me with any further questions you may have.

Send the email to your state Reps, and also the following people:
Rep.AngeloScaccia@Hou.State.MA.US
Rep.PaulFrost@Hou.State.MA.US
Rep.JohnFresolo@Hou.State.MA.US

And one more link
http://www.dogboston.com/blog/general/looking-for-action-on-anti-pet-rental-bill/

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Flexpetz says all their dogs are shelter dogs.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

And this makes shipping them around to multiple renters okay because...?

[q10.livejournal.com]

because maybe the alternative is a scenario in which they were put down already months or years ago?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

However, supporting pet rentals is not the proper solution to pet overpopulation. That would be like saying it's a Good Thing to buy inbred dogs from puppy mills. It may (big conditional on the "may") help the couple individual dogs in the program, but it does not help the overall situation.

As for that conditional, it's possible these are dogs that were going to be put down. It's also possible these are dogs that would have found a full-time home instead of being shipped around to different renters. A dog that is well-trained and has a good temperament as they claim their dogs all do would make an excellent candidate for adoption rather than being put down.

The Dolittler post I linked also has some comments on the history of FlexPets. Apparently their origins were that they actually bred dogs just for this. It's also not entirely clear what happens to the dogs as they age - they say that they only have dogs age 2-3 years old. They imply many are adopted, which I would like to believe, but I don't know.

[q10.livejournal.com]

buying puppy-mill dogs directly competes with adoption and supports the creation of more puppy mill dogs. it is more likely that pet rental consumers are drawn at least in part from the ranks of those who would not be able to consider full-time dog ownership - they're putting resources into the system that would otherwise go unutilized.

even if these particular dogs would've found a full-time home instead, they're freeing up those homes for the next round of adoptable dogs.

further, it sounds like these dogs are well trained, of good character, and in good health in large part because of the money FlexPets puts into them.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It's more the culture of casual pet ownership that is bothering me. I view it that this service is legitimizing the idea that pets can be obtained and then gotten rid of when you tire of them. Someone who subscribes to this service as their first encounter with a pet, or children of people who use it, may mistakenly think they can handle full-time pet ownership and then end up getting a dog that they abandon when they realize what it actually takes.

On the other hand, I'm thinking about comparing this to the Big Brothers/Sisters programs. People who want to work with kids but don't want to have one could sign up as a Big Sib. It seems somewhat similar to that concept. Except that if these people want to spend their time with dogs but not be owners, they could instead volunteer at a shelter, so instead having them rent a pet draws that resource away from shelters.

[q10.livejournal.com]

do you really believe that the state has the moral authority to prohibit things on the basis of their symbolizing a bad cultural trend? i find this a little terrifying.

[q10.livejournal.com]

for that matter, a lot of couples go through phases of staying overnight and of living together for a matter of a few months or a year before, starting to entangle their finances and getting rings and doing the other things that in our society tend to go with a lifetime relationship - yes, no one step guarantees that the next will work, but a lot of us still find that alternative better than jumping into maximal commitment totally blind.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Don't you think that people who rent a dog will actually be MORE aware of what it takes to own a pet than someone who's never cared for a pet at all?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

I wonder what percentage of first-time pet owners actually did research about what it takes to own a pet prior to getting the pet? The image I had in my head was that a person getting a pet would do research and have a good idea what it takes to own a pet, while a "renter" would instead assume that his experience (having food for the dog handed to him and never having to take the pet to the vet) would be the norm. I could very well be mistaken about most new pet owners doing research though, sadly, so you could be correct.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

It is NOT the norm for people to do serious research about what it takes to take care of a pet. At least in my experience. This is exacerbated by commercial sale of pets, which imho is therefore much worse for promoting responsible pet ownership than renting. I imagine the Humane Society wouldn't have to put out as many "don't buy baby pets as presents" pamphlets otherwise.

A large percentage of pet owners also don't take their pets to the vet at all. At least renters'd have some experience having to feed, water, and walk the animals. More than what a lot of people experience. And while they might not know how to train the animals either, if they adopt the same pet they rented, it would theoretically not be as much of an issue - they'd be getting a pre-trained pet.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

They imply many are adopted, which I would like to believe, but I don't know.

They explicitly address this in the FAQ - dogs that age out without being adopted are taken care of for life at their site. Also, I'm not sure I agree with the "shipping" characterization - they operate on a local basis, dogs aren't being taken moved really serious distances from place to place, and they have a "home base" that they spend most of their time at.

Also lots of dogs that are excellent candidates for adoption, still get put down.

From what I can tell the people renting pets would not be good candidates for adopting pets themselves, so I don't think that the company is necessarily discouraging pet adoption. It may even encourage it, because people may become attached to a dog and end up adopting one, whereas they might otherwise not have known that they had room for a dog in their life full-time. And they're no longer breeding dogs for this purpose. So I'm not entirely sure how this practice will really hurt the situation overall. I'd be in support of a law prohibiting breeding dogs to be rented (or breeding dogs at all), or regulating the business so that it couldn't put dogs down afterward or something. But after looking at the site I just can't summon up that much moral outrage.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

But how is it good for the dog to be "living" with multiple families? You've had pets, you know they miss you when you're gone, and dogs bond more strongly to their humans than many other pet species.

And an admittedly ad hominem attack on FlexPets itself: the CEO of the parent company has been convicted of multiple counts of fraud. While I don't think that it's possible for pet rental to do right by most of the actual pets, I'm even more skeptical that *this* company will do it right.

Simon Brodie, CEO of parent company convicted of fraud in the UK.
His company also had the Allerca dander-free cats, and refused peer-review on whether they really were dander-free.

[q10.livejournal.com]

any law you get passed will have implications far beyond this one company, and will probably outlive it, so regulating a whole industry out of existence to deal with one or two bad cases seems kinda heavy-handed. (of course, leaving a whole industry unregulated because the biggest players this week happen to be well-behaved may not make so much sense either - the point, on both sides, is that any law you pass is going to be much bigger than FlexPetz itself, and needs to be viewed in a wider context.)

[sammka.livejournal.com]

From what I can tell, these dogs don't "live" with any family more than a few days at a time (and often only for a few hours). I've left pets with petsitters for much longer than that. Maybe they missed the petsitter, but I don't think it really scarred them for life. Therapy pets spend a lot of time with other people, too.

I agree, though, if the CEO of the company isn't ethical it does make it less likely that the company itself will treat animals ethically. But I don't necessarily see that as a condemnation of the entire industry.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

But while your pets were with the petsitter, they missed you. These dogs will miss the other dogs they usually spend their time with. Unless they don't actually spend the majority of their time with the other dogs running around like their FAQs imply, then they just won't have *anyone* they get to know enough to miss.

[cosmicwonder.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. Renting a pet? If I were a MA resident, I would definitely email that letter. How cruel!

[meig.livejournal.com]

My advice would be to remove the part about human children. Mainly because many people do not view animals equal to humans and it might get the person reading the letter to think, "Oh, she is one of "those" people," and you will lose your credibility.

Just my suggestion.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Heh, already sent, and my state Senator already replied saying he's looking into it. I send roughly one or two emails a month to my state and federal Reps, and the one I sent in January caught his eye b/c it was on a pet project of his, and he's been sending personalized responses to every email I send since. It's pretty cool.

FWIW, I do not rank animals quite as high as humans, nor pets quite as high as children, but in my opinion they're close. I guess I feel animals should be treated as well as possible and protected nearly as much as we protect children, EXCEPT when it's a case of human vs. animal (for example, I do eat meat, I do believe in animal testing, and I understand that sometimes you have to give an animal up for adoption).

[q10.livejournal.com]

hey, all other domestic animals are treated as commodities, to be slaughtered as soon as they get plump enough or have enough fur - why should your favorites get a special exemption from this commodity-for-human-amusement status?

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Dogs are not my favorites, they are some of my least favorites as far as potential pets go b/c like every furred animal I'm allergic to them, but unlike most they won't stay the fuck away from me are highly social with humans and want to interact with us all more closely than my comfort or allergies allow.

And I never said that treating other animals as a commodity was a good thing. I'm just taking action on one particular instance of it. And I don't feel this is extreme action on my part either - I'm not against pet ownership, I'm just against institutionalizing serial pet ownership without any responsibility towards the pet. Basically I'm against Brittany Spears -style pet ownership.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

And I never said that treating other animals as a commodity was a good thing

But you directly support industries that treat animals much worse by eating meat. Just sayin'.

[q10.livejournal.com]

it just seems like an awfully strange set of priorities, even in the hypothetical world where these dogs are bred for this, are rented around for a few years, and are killed by relatively painless means (the particular operation you linked to appears to currently be doing much better than this, but details are scarce), they're still enjoying better lives than the vast majority of animals who live out their lives under the power and in the care of humans. i know you pick the political fights you can win, but it seems like this is singling out one class of businesses in drastic disproportion to the amount of evil they perpetrate, even by the moral standards that make this exercise seem like a good idea.

i'm sorry, pet people are always telling me i can't buy a nice cat-fur coat, and can't eat horses, and this and that and the other damn thing, and it smacks of the worst kind of speciesism. the callous speciesism that vegans complain about is at least coherent (humans tend to have salient cognitive capacities that dogs and pigs and monkeys generally lack), but the system that favors dogs and cats and horses over foxes and minks and pigs is jut offensively arbitrary - more to the point, it's imposing your own personal arbitrary preferences about which animals deserve better on everybody, like a coalition of Hindus showing up and taking away our burgers, because that happens to be what offend their arbitrary sensibilities.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Your other arguments are entirely irrelevant to the issue of whether pet rentals are a good idea. They may be relevant to whether I have a coherent system of beliefs, but that is not the point of this post, and not what I am interested in discussing at this time.

Could you please clarify for me how it's a good thing for an animal to be repeatedly moved from home to home, bonding with one family and then being ripped from it over and over again?

[q10.livejournal.com]

being good is not a prerequisite for being legal. people hold Klan rallies and put too much salt on their food and sell tickets to bad movies and say mean things to strangers in line to get subway passes and wear offensively ugly clothing and make stupid investment decisions that mean they won't be able to provide for their families as well as they would have otherwise. in none of these cases is it deemed appropriate to ban the practice outright (although in some there are regulatory measures to try to soften things a bit). further, there are in all these cases pretty good reasons why we shouldn't try to ban these things outright. if you want me to believe that this one industry is not merely bad-on-balance (of which i'm still unconvinced, because it's hard to establish a baseline), but bad enough to ban, then yes i'd like to see some show of good faith that you actually think the underlying moral standard is important enough to inform your policy positions, especially in the absence of any other really knock-down argument.

besides, i think that this kind of policy agenda promotes the culture of ‘if i don't see it, and if it doesn't happen to kinds of people and animals i'm familiar with, i don't have to care about it’, and i may not think i have the authority to ban that culture, but i sure as hell don't have to like it.

[q10.livejournal.com]

also, an analogy - i'd be a lot more okay with a ban on all meat than a selective ban on the meats of kosher animals, because the state has a commitment to equal treatment of its citizens the spirit of which the second violates for no good reason (a ban on kosher slaughter practices would be more defensible, since there you can come up with some kind of reason). likewise, i'd be tentatively in favor of certain procedural changes to the criminal justice system that made things easier for defendants, but i'd be really freaked out by any proposal to extend the new procedural benefits selectively to one particular class of defendants, even if the distinction being made (say, drinking more than 300 cups of coffee a year) was not one with a lot of historical baggage. even if on balance restricting the exploitation of animals is good, selectively restricting certain people's animal exploitation practices can still be bad because it violates the state's moral commitment to fairness.

[q10.livejournal.com]

[reads various stuff online] so basically it's an escort services, but with dogs instead of people and with no implicit promise of sex?

[sammka.livejournal.com]

That is SO TOTALLY WHAT IT IS.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Except that escorts can give informed consent.

[q10.livejournal.com]

do dogs every give informed consent to anything? if not, could you kindly explain why it's suddenly important to start worrying about that now?

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Except when they're on drugs or being pimped or trafficked.

[q10.livejournal.com]

oh, and an actual attempt to be helpful -

standard usage apparently (according to a quick m-w.com check) dictates that it should read ‘and similar legislation in the senate’, not ‘and similar legislature in the senate’.

η: also, ‘individual animals’, not ‘individuals animals’.

not that either typo makes a big deal, but if people are using this form letter it'd probably be best if they fixed those first.

[parrot-lady.livejournal.com]

While this might be useful as a NON-pofit for something like say Retirement homes..... a business model, No way. I can't believe they have chicago listed on thier cities. UGH.

[weirdlilfaechld.livejournal.com]

I can actually see a good side to this. I have never been able to have horses so every weekend until she moved I went to a friends house to care for her horses. She got a break from it, and I got to handle horses. After I went bird crazy when Maria was my only bird I would go to a friend of my dad's aviary, handle his birds for a while, find one that liked me, and take him or her home for about two weeks to a month and I kept doing this until I had enough experience with all ages, personalities, and species of birds that I felt comfortable enough fostering, and it paid off. By the time I would get a foster bird I had already gone through the learning period. This person owned a chain of plant stores and other then his beloved sun conure these birds were cared for by employees, not him. Yes, they bonded to the employee caring for them and a bit to me and would be a bit confused about the change but their owner described it as a wonderful way for me to get experience and for his birds to be socialized.

I don't see how this it too different. Already healthy, healthy checked animals that give people who would otherwise not be able to have their lives enriched by them the experience of having a dog. In fact, I think what I did was much worse because dogs are likely to love the rental person, love the person at home, be a little confused but learn to love it quickly. It also provides a mandatory training course on dog handling, and with how many times they mention the vet bills that Jackpot needed I don't think people are going to forget that dogs are expensive. I'm sure those bills will be brought up repeatedly at the training courses as well. It seems more like people that wanted to be a rescue and decided to try making money instead. It has the possibility to give strength to the mindset of people who already think pets are disposable but I think pet lovers are either going to despise them or love them for giving them an opportunity they wanted but couldn't have responsibly. Would it be better for people who can't give their pets care regularly every single day like most of the costumers it talks of to have a pet of their own and no guarantee he or she will get the care needed? Dogs are surprisingly hardy when it comes to changing homes that doesn't seem like the company to choose dogs that will panic about it. If they have any knowledge of dogs at all, which it seems they do, they chose dogs that will likely find their rental period nothing more then a playdate with a new person.

Not related at all, I just realized that the author of the dolittler blog is the same one who writes a very witty, satirical informative article for Veterinary Practice News when her blog was mentioned in the article. This is despite the fact that both use the same picture.

[ayashi.livejournal.com]

Not a fan, I hope they aren't allowed to do it.

I can think of situations where it could be used - maybe giving a child the opportunity to see what a big commitment it is to get a pet? But on the same token, kind of removes the "commitment" when the animal is a rental.

I dunno :( animals are a part of my family, quite unlike the cars we rent, so...

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Cars *are* a commodity. I see nothing inherently morally wrong with keeping it that way. Cars don't care if you send them to a different person every day of the week.

In the end I too can see situations where renting a pet is preferable to other alternatives, but I don't like it.