Opinion: What the typical animal rescue narratives leave out

Rembrandt the dog rides the elevator of the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. While researching and writing my book, “Rethinking Rescue,” I spent a lot of time with Lori Weise, the founder of L.A.’s Downtown Dog Rescue who has helped the pets and people of this city’s struggling, underserved communities since the 1990s. If a pet gets loose and is taken by animal control to a shelter, its owner is not allowed to take it home without paying a “redemption fee.” Some people who love their pets can’t afford the cost of veterinary care, which has climbed more than 60% in the last 10 years ; if a pet becomes sick or injured, they surrender it to the shelter, sometimes in the mistaken belief that an on-site veterinarian will treat it. The conventional rescue narrative, repeated by activists who are largely middle-class or affluent, renders these humans invisible — way stations on a pet’s road to a “better” home. The endless flow into shelters, Weise said almost a decade ago, “isn’t a pet problem or a people problem, it’s a poverty problem.” Carol Mithers lives in L.A. and serves an aging and very demanding rescue dog.