Pets and Poverty: Background information when reading Rethinking Rescue

It's a standard feel-good trope of countless viral YouTube videos and the central narrative of many animal rescue marketing campaigns: a suffering dog or cat found in a horrifying state—emaciated and filthy, abandoned, neglected, or abused—is saved by a heroic rescuer and adopted into a new, loving home where it lives happily ever after. But as Carol Mithers writes in Rethinking Rescue, "The majority of dogs and cats held by shelters and rescues aren't victims of deliberate cruelty. They're more likely to have begun their lives as poor people's pets." And in all too many cases, those animals end up in shelters not because they are unwanted but because their owners simply cannot afford to care for them.

Rethinking Rescue examines the many barriers faced by low-income pet owners, including lack of access to resources and services, the exorbitant cost of veterinary care, and the crisis in affordable housing—for many low-income pet owners, the biggest challenge.

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