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Pets Crossing the Line From Property to Family Member

Dog and Cat Owners Seek Compensation for Pain and Suffering
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
ABC News

Dec. 7, 2006 — Himie the Rottweiler stood stranded in a boat floating
in the rising floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina with a bottle of
medicine and a note of instructions tied around his neck: "My name is
Himie and I need these eye drops."

Owner Gary Karcher, a disabled Vietnam vet, was forced to leave his
dog behind when authorities ordered all residents to leave their
property in New Orleans last year.

But even though Himie wasn't a refrigerator or a car, that's the way
the Federal Emergency Management Agency treated Karcher's beloved
dog.

Members of Congress were so outraged over the fate of abandoned pets
that they put some teeth into legislation, requiring communities to
make provisions for animals during natural disasters or lose their
federal funding.

What those members of Congress felt and their reaction to what people
suffered as a result of the forced separation from their pets is in
line with the feelings of millions of Americans who consider their
pets members of the family.

"People lost their houses, their jobs and their family members," said
Michael Mountain, executive director of Best of Friends, the Utah-
based organization that rescued 6,000 of the 15,000 animals left
behind in New Orleans. "Fido was all they had left."

Best of Friends airlifted Himie to a Mississippi animal sanctuary and
several months later found Karcher in Oklahoma. Himie and Karcher
were reunited.

The way that FEMA treated Himie and the thousands of other pets in
the areas devastated by Katrina is in line with how American courts
have historically treated animals — as property.

But all that is changing as a growing number of lawsuits from
Washington state to Vermont have challenged how the law defines the
worth of a warm companion.

Last May, an appeals court in Washington state created a new tort
called "malicious injury to a pet," which allows owners to collect
emotional distress damages. The case involved three teenagers who
doused a cat with gasoline and lit it on fire. The cat was
euthanized.

Denis and Sarah Scheele of Northfield, Vt., are engaged in a similar
fight, after a neighbor shot their dog Shadow when he wandered onto
his property. They have sued the neighbor for compensation for loss
of companionship and emotional distress, though under state law there
is no provision for recovering damages related to the loss of a pet.

This week they vowed to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tennessee adopted the first such legislation in 2000, the so-called T-
Bo law, named for a 12-year-old dog that was fatally attacked by a
larger dog.

Many Americans don't need the courts to convince them their pets are
living creatures, not property.

Barbara Estabrook, a former nurse from Toms River, N.J., spends
thousands of dollars a year to make sure her horse and seven cats are
healthy and happy.

Ginger, a 22-year-old Abyssinian cat has geriatric constipation;
Skeeter is asthmatic and nebulized every day; and horse Harry suffers
from an EPM infection and arthritis. Gulliver, a skinny stray,
wandered onto her patio with a collar embedded in his neck that
needed attention; Daisy was orphaned at 4 days old; and Stinger has a
tail that sticks straight up, making him look like a scorpion.

"All of my animals are runaways or throwaways or strays," said
Estabrook. "I don't believe in buying animals that are bred because
they always get homes. They're a part of our lives. It is our
responsibility to keep them well and not take them for granted."

Estabrook is not the only one who feels this way. Animal owners spend
$19 billion a year on veterinary care and make more than 200 million
annual visits to the veterinarian, according to the Veterinary Law
Association.

The rising costs of veterinary care are in part a result of the
improvement in the quality of care available for animals — and not
just for dogs and cats. The Animal Medical Center of New York
treats "pocket pets" like hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs, as well
as rabbits, ferrets, snakes, swans and even a pair of field mice
named A and B.

But with the improvement in care, the ability of vets to deal with
more and more serious ailments has meant increasingly hard choices
for pet owners. Do you pay thousands of dollars for the surgery your
beloved pet needs, or just let the ailing animal die?

At Animal Medical Center of New York, grief counselor Susan Cohen
helps owners make those difficult medical decisions. Owners
spend "tens of thousands of dollars" on medical care during the
lifetime of a pet — not including dog food and kitty collars, she
said.

Many pet owners exhaust their income on hip-replacement surgery,
specialized cancer care and other lifesaving procedures. Owners
sacrifice vacations, fixing up houses and getting their own health
checkups to pay for their pets' care, Cohen said.

The animal center has a collaborative relationship with world-
renowned neighbor Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, which
helped it develop an expensive melanoma vaccine for dogs.

"People come here because they want a human level of medicine," said
Cohen. "It's not exactly that people think their pets are human, but
they think of them as family."

Veterinarians understand the connection people feel to the animal
kingdom but fear that lawsuits will drive up the cost of malpractice
insurance, just like in the human world. Those costs will be passed
on to pet owners, and the animals will suffer.

Vermont veterinarian Karen Bradley said one of her clients has
postponed her own dental care so that her dog can have a painful
tooth removed, but many others might not seek medical care for a pet
if costs go up.

"It doesn't help the human bond if we people are priced out," the
Montpelier mother said of the Vermont court challenge. "It won't
affect people who buy coats for their dogs, but it will hurt a single
mother with two kids and a cat."

Lawsuits are about more than kibbles and bits, argues animal lover
and lawyer Carolyn Matlack, the author of "We've Got Feelings, Too."

"People want recognition and respect for their animals," she
said. "They are different from people, but they are not like a couch
or a chair. The courts are struggling with this but judges own pets,
too."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2705687&page=1

Posted on SHARE Yahoo group Dec. 8, 2006