by Bonnie Chandler

Massachusetts state senators voted for a lie last week. Some of them even knew it was a lie, but they voted for it anyway, because they were afraid not to.

They were afraid to be labeled as voting for something that media hype has dubbed “cruelty to animals,” even though it is not. They let emotion and media hype and “everyone else is voting for it” affect their decision.

H.344, the bill to ban dog “devocalization” surgery, also known as “debarking” or, more accurately, “bark softening,” is based on a lie. It is an “animal rights” bill. To anyone who has really paid attention to animal rights, this is a tautology. In my opinion, animal rights bills are always based on lies.

This law will kill many dogs and break many pet owners’ hearts. This, too, is typical of animal rights bills.

If this sounds extreme, it is because the public needs to know the bald truth. Despite the efforts of many concerned dog owners who tried to tell them the truth, our legislators voted for the bill without checking facts. They ignored information provided by dog experts, trainers, and veterinarians in favor of the more sensational testimony of those who, though they may care deeply about animals, are misinformed. The result is that our legislators supported the agenda of national fundraising organizations that are running a coordinated campaign to force us to live by their political philosophy—the idea that we are better off living without any animals at all.

There is a crucial difference between animal “rights” and animal “welfare.” Animal rights only sounds like it is about making animal care more humane. It is really about taking our animals away from us and creating a vegan society. The leaders know very few people would agree, so they hide behind proposals that superficially sound humane, to fool those without firsthand knowledge of how animal husbandry really works.

But the proposals always end up killing animals or making them more expensive. That is the key to identifying animal rights legislation.

It really is not difficult to figure out—a little critical thinking is all that is needed. Animal rights calls for not just some rights, but equal rights with humans. Equal rights would mean that animals could not be owned, could not be pets, could not be hunted, could not be eaten. Because who, given freedom of choice, would choose those things? (That is the theory, anyway.)

An out-of-state animal rights organization wrote H.344 and persuaded a local teenager to propose it.

Even though debarking surgery is quick, safe, and only partially softens dogs’ voices, the idea sounds horrible to people who have not heard of it before. They ask, “Why would anyone do that to their dog?” They think this is a rhetorical question. It is not. There are good reasons that dog owners may need to have it done.

Bark softening is one of the coping mechanisms that allows us to keep animals even in dense housing, where they may annoy neighbors. Cities, towns, neighborhoods, condo associations, apartment buildings all have ordinances that allow them to evict nuisances, and dog barking is always specified as one of the nuisances.

The truth is, the idea of surgery seems just as horrible to a dog owner threatened with eviction, but there may be no other way to keep the dog. In many cases, euthanization is the only other option. Although most dogs can, with much careful work, be trained to be quieter, there will always be a few that cannot, even with expert trainers. And there will always be a few neighbors for whom nothing but absolute silence will suffice.

In fact, the surgery is done for the neighbors, not the owners.

Because very few people have any direct experience with this rare surgery, the bill promoters were able to get away with egregious lies. They waved pictures of a dog with a huge surgical incision from some other cause and said it was a debark job; they posted YouTube videos of dogs with weird voices from illness or injury and said they were debarked; they said it is “common,” “painful,” has dangerous side effects. They asserted that all dogs can easily be trained to bark less and that owners who can’t are “just lazy.” They whipped up public outcry with inflammatory descriptions of “silencing” dogs, “taking away their only form of communication,” “ripping out their voice boxes,” “cutting their throats.” They said breeders get whole litters of puppies devocalized “for profit,” sometimes even doing the job themselves by cruel methods. None of this is true.

They even dragged in imaginary connections to drug dealers and illegal dogfighting.

The few voices of those with actual knowledge were hard to hear in the hubub, and the few legislators who listened to them were not always sure who to believe. The debarking operation is so rare that even most veterinarians have no experience with it, so some were advocating on the side of the ignorant.

This is what happens when legislators are put in the false position of dictating how other people pursue their professions. They should not be voting on esoteric veterinary matters without the veterinary knowledge to know when they are being given false information. The decision should be left to the vets.

This vote sets a dangerous precedent by banning a veterinary procedure based on emotional media promotion, and requiring vets to justify their medical decisions. This precedent is just what the animal rights folks are waiting for. They announced years ago what they plan to do with it: Ban more and more veterinary procedures and demand more oversight, until it becomes impossible or too expensive to keep pets healthy.

The bill now goes back to the House to be reconciled with the version the House passed a month ago.

Bonnie Chandler is a small-scale goat farmer on Prospect Hill Road and has been training dogs all her life. She is active in many dog clubs and animal events.