To Love, Honor and Belly-Scratch

The wave of pet custody cases joins this list of small victories for the animal-law community. The more courts recognize the value of the relationship between a human and a pet, then the further animal-welfare issues are nudged in animals' favor. But the cases beg certain questions: Is there a slippery slope? Could pet custody rulings affect the treatment of lab rats or abattoir cows?

Bruce Wagman, an attorney and professor who teaches three university courses in animal law (including at UC Berkeley and the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco), is wary of getting ahead of himself. "Pet custody is just one way of taking down the wall," he says. "For courts to recognize the value of a human/animal relationship would be one of the bricks."

Wagman dreams of a world without cruelty to animals. He has no children. "I never wanted them and neither does my wife," he says. Instead he keeps three dogs and four cats, referring to them as "animal children. In terms of my love and passion, I know it's as strong as anyone else has for their human children."

With help from Wagman, the Animal Legal Defense Fund now issues a friend-of-the-court brief in certain cases, imploring the court to consider an animal's interests in pet custody disputes. The brief argues for the emotional consciousness of animals and the strength of the bond with humans, citing a survey that "more than half of companion animal owners would prefer a dog or a cat to a human if they were stranded on a deserted island. Another poll revealed that 50% of pet owners would be 'very likely' to risk their lives to save their pets."

Clearly the greater the emotional bond, the better the animal's interests are protected, which would explain why dogs are, by far, the most contested pets in custody cases. Cats come in a distant second, and then horses and even monkeys. (No iguanas as yet.) The sheer love and slipper-fetching devotion that canines give their owners makes them harder to part with than, say, cats, which even cat lovers admit are in it more for themselves. Dogs are also of particular comfort in these uncertain times--with the insecurity of the workplace, the fragility of families, the demise of community and the pace of modern living.