The ultimate book on animal allyship

Suzana Gartner is a colleague on LinkedIn who’s a fellow Canadian. She gave me an ebook for A Voice for Animals: The Social Movement That Provides Dignity and Compassion for Animals, which was self-published in 2023 with Archway Publishing.

Gartner brings her experience as an animal rights lawyer to this book about compassion for animals. She starts the book by talking about the animal shelter system, in which animals are euthanized when the shelters are over capacity. She also brings her personal experience with animals, such as when her family adopted a bunny during the pandemic to help them cope with hard times.

Animal rights (AR) laws have evolved, especially in the realm of companion animals. For example, people lost their lives after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, because they refused to abandon their animal family members. But there’s still a lot of work to do to change the laws around AR.

Here are the highlights I found worth learning about:

People are more healthy when they have animal companions. Apparently, children who are around animals have fewer allergy symptoms.
Every day, thousands of animals are euthanized in the shelter system, which encourages disposability. High-kill shelters euthanize over 10% of their animals.
Most people surrender their dogs because of behavioural problems, overbreeding, or a lack of responsibility.
Animal control can sell lost dogs for research—even with ID tags—which makes the responsibility piece even more important.
Puppy mills supply the most amount of “designer dogs.”
Gartner explains the No Kill Movement in the US and some of its flaws, what Social Conscious Sheltering (SCS) is and its eight tenets, and examples of SCS (SCS is now been rebranded as PACT, People and Animals in Community Together). The Humane Animal Sheltering (HAS) model integrates the No Kill Movement and SCS models.
Abusing animals leads to violence against people. Gartner talks about some of the egregious animal abuse cases.
She shares some examples of legal cases that fight the notion that animals are legally property.
Some animals show us the limits of animal welfare and rights. Animal like horses can be used in therapy, yet are exported and sold for their meat, or used unethically for racing or carriage rides. Rabbits are commonly used for research. Farmed animals have the least amount of legal rights. (Gartner gives lots of examples of rescued or companion pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, and fish)

The rest of the book goes into all the other ways we interact with and can help animals, especially if you’re an animal guardian. We can:

Report chained dogs
Reduce light pollution for birds
Stop feeding wild animals
Adopt pets from rescues, not stores
Attend AR conferences, rallies, protests, and marches
Support rescue organizations & sanctuaries for both farmed and wild animals
Withdraw support for rodeos, racetracks, dog sledding, aquariums, zoos, and amusement parks that use animals
Contact government representatives (here’s my Google sheet of reps in Vancouver, BC, and Canada)
Become vegan. Gartner is vegan and talked about how she made the transition and why you should switch.

She ends the book with a list of resources that provide more information on how you can help animals.

If you’re new to animal rights and don’t see why we need to support animals—whether companion, farmed, or wild—this is your crash course to learn why and how we can help them.

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