“Ody died peacefully last year, Nov. 29. He was
14 and a half. Truth be told, Ody didn’t just die. I killed him. I paid a vet
to come to my house and inject a chemical solution into a vein in Ody’s back
leg”(Pierce). Jessica Pierce, the owner of a dog named Ody, gave
euthanasia to her pet, but she mentions that her dog had been in serious
decline for six months. Partial paralysis of his laryngeal muscles made it hard
for him to breathe, and he would begin to pant at the slightest exertion.” Though she gave her favorite pet an end-life-care (euthanasia), she
believes that euthanasia is a better way to help Ody relieve his/her pain.
Euthanasia for pets is a controversial topic; some
animal advocates disagree with using euthanasia for injured or homeless pets because
it kills pets before they are meant to die. On the other hand, most owners
choose euthanasia for pets for pain relief; and other people believe that using
euthanasia can solve the overpopulation of pets. Because of the controversial
of nature euthanasia, media also provide different information and try to
persuade audience for using euthanasia or not. There are three ways of
reporting of euthanasia through media: Euthanasia is heartless because it kills pets before they are meant to die; Euthanasia is helpful for both pets and owners
because of pain relief; Euthanasia is correct for the whole society because of pets’
overpopulation.
From 1990, when Georgia’s "Humane Euthanasia
Act" became the first state law to mandate euthanasia for pets
(“Plaintiffs’ Verified Complaint For Injunctive and Declaratory Relief”), tons of animal advocates stood against this law and thought that
using euthanasia was heartless for pets. They collected people and had the
protest march to against the new law of euthanasia. The advocates worked on
rejecting euthanasia for a long time. Nowadays, animal advocates suggest owners
to send pets to no-kill shelters rather than giving them euthanasia. In the
article of “ Homeless
Pets Crowd Shelters as Families Hit Hard Times”, Goodman talks about no-kill
shelters and rescue groups, their shelters and rescue spaces will keep pets
until they are adopted (Goodman). This article aims at readers who disagree
with using chemical solution for pets so that the whole article criticizes
using euthanasia and also points the hard time of homeless pets, and it strongly
states that giving a death for pet is heartbreaking. Goodman even writes, “You pick up the young, adult, healthy dog and its
only crime is that it’s alive. And you have to put it to sleep. It’s torturous
to staff. It’s heartbreaking.” She
tries to make owners feel guilty if they use euthanasia for their pets, and persuade
other owners do not choose euthanasia for pets. When we read this article, the
words like “ tear”, “heartbreaking”, “sad” and so on will likely influence the reader’s emotion and
will enable to establish those images in their mind.
However, some readers will be influenced a lot by
this article, but the author only talks about homeless pets without talking
about injured pets. There are still a lot of owners have injured pets who
suffer a lot, like Ody, and those kinds of pets have a the different situation
for the use of euthanasia. The reason I believe that is if she talks about
injured pets, the whole article will not be as strong as the original one. If
we just look at the writing style of this article, I think it is a really great
article for rewriting the stories because she has her own purpose and bias for
her writing. In the book of Rewriting,
Harris always emphasizes that rewriting for texts needs to focus on writers’
own goals to while it forwards. Return
to this article, Goodman’s purpose is to persuade people to not use euthanasia
so that she does not need to talk too widely in her article. She is a animal
advocate, and she only want people get more attention on pets’ rights.
Goodman does not talk about injured pets in her
article because her audience is not for that group. As for injured pets and their owners, there is another
article aim at injured pets and talks about the benefits for injecting a
chemical solution. In the article of “Deciding When a Pet Has Suffered Enough”, the story of Ody, which
mentions in the beginning, has a different viewpoint than Goodman. The author
tends to give injured pets euthanasia if they suffered a lot. She said that
owners have to decide to end a long-term pain for their pets. She mentions
about “In United States, 10 million dogs suffer from osteoarthritis but that only a small
fraction get treatment. Many dogs are treated ineffectually or are given too
little pain medicine for too short a time. The only treatment many arthritic
dogs receive is euthanasia (Pierce).” She emphasize that the injured pets will also have a poor
life if the owners do not pay more attentions on to pains of their pets.
The whole article is objective to describe pets’
various pain, the benefits for euthanasia and the reason why should owners
decide to end a pain for their pets. Without persuasive words or sentences, she
only supports the facts for injured pets and the reasons to use the chemical
solution. As one small individual, her dog’s story is just represents part of pets
and owners, but Pierce tries to write without too much emotional expression to
provide more unbiased information for other owners. Readers will still get
strong emotion from this article because of the evidences. From her article, there
are some statistics about the rate of injured pets, the complete analysis of
using euthanasia, and even the different economic conditions for the owners. The
whole attitudes towards the end-life-care (euthanasia) are objective and clear.
Pierce provides a lot of information about
chemical solution, and animal advocates appeal people do not use euthanasia.
The common between those two group of peoples is they all work or own pets, but
how does other people think about the use of euthanasia if they do not have any
pet?
In fact, the concern of non-owners is pets’
overpopulation problem. If residents do not feed any pets, they are only agitated
about the problems that pets will bring, such as noisy, dirty and destroy of
their living space. The third article talks about euthanasia from those residents’
angel, and it represents some residents’ opinions to complain pets’ overpopulation
in neighborhood.
In the recent years, a lot of people choose to
own one or more pets so that the growing births of pets in neighborhood bring a
lot of problems. In the article of “When the Veterinarian Comes to Your Pet”, O’Shea mentions that “Pet overpopulation is a particular problem,
especially in areas where residents have trouble paying for veterinary care”, there
are a lot of people abandon their pets so that they become homeless pets and
bring some problems to neighborhood. Residents struggle from the noise and
dirty environments so that they support euthanasia to solve the overpopulation.
She also talks about how does the overpopulation of pets’ influences residents,
and the different people’s reactions. Most people believe that euthanasia is necessary for the
extra pets in the living areas because they are troubles for human’s lives.
Some residents without any pets, but they still think it is no need to give a
death to those poor pets.
This article writes more about people’s opinion
in this area, and gives some examples of the exact problems. Even if in the
same area, people also have different opinions about the use of chemical
solution. Some people really hate the overpopulation problem, but some people
are really interesting for pets and even try to keep some stray pets. The style
of this article is diverse, and the author tries to let readers know that people’s
different opinions towards pets’ overpopulation in the neighborhood. The
limitation for this article is that reader find hardly about the strong viewpoints
for non-residents because nearly all people have different opinions. Additionally,
if the readers are owners, I think some owners may feel unexpected to see some
opinions because some opinions are really extreme.
As for personal consideration of pets’
euthanasia, I think it is no necessary to find the perfect media to give the
complete summary to cover all three ways for giving pets the euthanasia. Even
the readers are both owners or not, they all have their own reasons and
situations to decide pets’ lives. Throughout the media, we can learn more
information and knowledge about pets’ euthanasia. Some people agree or disagree
with using euthanasia for pets, but I think we all need to look the different
media, to consider from different angel. The only reason I persuade people to
do that is: learn more, you pets can get more benefits. Because of the lack of
animals care than human, we also need to get more information to give animals
rights and make the humane society.
In conclusion, different media have different
purpose to write and they aim at different readers. For animal advocates, euthanasia
is heartless because it kills pets’ lives; for injured pets, euthanasia is helpful for both
pets and owners because of pain relief; for non-owners, euthanasia is necessary
for the neighborhood because of pets’ overpopulation problem. Those types of
attitudes all have limitations but it helps readers to learn more information
for pets, to make the pets have a better lives.
Works Cited
Goodman, Brenda. "Homeless Pets Crowd
Shelter as Families Hit Hard Times." The New York Times, 2008.
O'Shea, Bridget. "When the Veterinarian Comes to your
Pet." The New York Times, 2011.
Pierce, Jessica. "Deciding When a Pet Has Suffer
Enough." The New York Times, 2012.
“Plaintiffs’
verified complaint For Injunctive and Declaratory Relief”. URL:
http://www.kittyvillage.com/morton_v_irvin.pdf
