I want to push back on Varner’s view because of the consequences it seems to have for the moral status of animals in shelters. To begin, I disagree with his definition of what it means to be a pet and a companion animal . Varner’s definitions do not leave any room for abandoned animals that are capable of the kind of companionship he is describing but are suddenly torn away from it, or animals who have never known that kind of companionship but still crave it. While the welfare of an animal one does not own may not matter to that particular individual, it does matter just as much as the welfare of the owned animal.
I define a pet as any owned animal. I disagree with Varner’s assertion that a pet must be the object of its owner’s affection. Varner gives the example of “a dog abandoned to a tether in the back yard and for whom no one any longer feels affection hardly seems to be a pet anymore…[the dog] may very well crave human companionship, but the affection is not reciprocated” (Varner, 453&463). Varner does not consider this dog a pet, so how can he hold the people who tethered him in the yard accountable for…show more content… Varner briefly discusses euthanasia and the practice of euthanizing healthy shelter animals, but does so by recapping the views of Bernard Rollin and Tom Regan in the context of obligations to respect individual animals. In doing so, he avoids giving his own view that would have to utilize the definitions he established, which does not consider the obligations we have toward respecting unowned companion animals. The considerations given to the life of a companion animal who is in a relationship with a human ought to be given to unowned companion animals as well. Otherwise, the moral question of whether or not the companion animal should be euthanized is dependent on the person the animal is in relationship with, and not the moral status of the animal
