Did you know that under the law pets are seen as replaceable property? That’s right, the law essentially treats losing a pet the same way as losing a table. In honor of Chloe the Mini Frenchie, Loni Edwards’ beloved dog who passed away due to medical error, PetInsider will be featuring a story every Wednesday about pets being family, not property. Please join us by reading the stories and signing the pledge we created with the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) to push for change.
We found Popeye as a dirty, matted stray dog several years ago. When we found him, our first goal was to reunite him with his humans. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful there, and our next goal was to get him adopted. In the process of finding him a new home, we fell in love and Popeye joined our family with our three other dogs.
We would get to know him, learn his quirks, work on his bad habits, and learn to communicate with him. And he would learn to communicate with us – we know when he’s unhappy, we know when he’s excited, we know when he’s scared and needs extra love. He has become as attached to us as we are attached to him. He is our only dog that insists on going everywhere with us and soon we learned how easy he is to travel with and how well behaved he was around food. In fact, he cared more about people watching or looking for dogs to bark at than any type of food placed right in front of him. Couple that with the fact that he’s extremely photogenic, the social media personality of “Popeye the Foodie” was born.
We met Loni and Chloe on a trip with other social media pups and their humans. We had the opportunity to share our love of the pups with fun activities geared towards them. Chloe was such a sweetheart and she wasn’t just Loni’s dog, she was Loni’s best friend and companion, just as Popeye is ours. Our hearts broke when we learned of young Chloe’s passing due to an avoidable medical error. Even though we trust our vets to care for our animals, holding veterinarians accountable for medical malpractice is not possible under our current laws. The recourse for animal death due to negligence is their monetary replacement value, similar to replacing a broken phone, laptop or other property. This is our current law and we think it needs to change. We could never consider Popeye, his siblings or any other pet as property. They are beings with their own intelligence, feelings, and personalities. We can’t imagine there being another Popeye the Foodie. There won’t… and for all families with pets, there is an understanding that our animals are less like property and more like family. Please join us in pushing for much needed change by signing and sharing the pledge.
Please join us in pushing for much needed change by signing and sharing the pledge (https://aldf.org/animalsnotproperty). Follow along every Wednesday for a new story, and sign up for our newsletter to receive it in your inbox.
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