In the mid-1990s, Lori Weise began working at a furniture factory near Skid Row, a blighted section of downtown Los Angeles notorious for its high rates of homelessness, poverty, and crime. Struck by the sheer number of skinny, mangy street dogs prowling the sidewalks in search of food, she and a colleague started a spay-and-neuter program and animal rescue run out of the back of the factory, an operation they dubbed "Downtown Dog Rescue." Yet as Weise soon realized, many of the loose dogs roaming the streets were not actually strays. Instead, they were pets belonging to the area's homeless population. These dogs lacked a good diet, safe shelter, and access to medical care for the same reasons their unhoused owners did. And what their owners needed was help, not blame.

As Carol Mithers recounts in Rethinking Rescue, that realization proved to be a watershed moment for Weise, inspiring...