"I believe that some things should not be told, they should be felt."

October 24, 2016 9:24 PM

Almost 100,000 dogs are euthanised every year in Taiwan. The dogs caught on the street are kept in the kennel for twelve days waiting for adoption. If nobody rescues them over that period of time, they are put down. The ones who are seriously ill and suffering are put down immediately. Yun-Fei Tou is the author of Memento Mori, a series of portraits of these Taiwanese stray dogs taken just before being euthanised.

A short video shows some of the photography sessions.
Gallery page at the artist's site.

posted by Johnny Wallflower (37 comments total)

I was really confused for a second.
posted by guiseroom at 9:33 PM on October 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Just reading the description of this made me cry. I don't think I can click on the link. I wish I could save all of the dogs.
posted by ilovewinter at 9:35 PM on October 24, 2016 [19 favorites]

I can't look at this. I think I'm glad it exists because it might make someone else do something. But I can't look at this.
posted by nfalkner at 9:54 PM on October 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

I am a confirmed dogskeptic and avoid dogs generally and can report that I opened the links contained in this post and now want every unwanted dog in the world to live in my house and probably put their awful mouths near me and have their feet smell like corn chips in my presence and generally be scary because of their very good dog faces do not open these links.
posted by wreckingball at 10:16 PM on October 24, 2016 [21 favorites]

oh dog. I have enough trouble resisting the urge to save all the pups that did my heart no favors. If one thing makes me despair it's our treatment of our best "creation". Humanity's gotten better over time, but still.

Meanwhile, I need to go squish the 3 of my 4 who will let me squish them. (1 is 5 lbs and is terrified of me though the extra cheese I sneak her may be bringing her around. Has only taken 3 years)
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:33 PM on October 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I... this is basically psychological terrorism. Delete this post.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 11:52 PM on October 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

I was really confused for a second.
posted by guiseroom at 2:03 PM on October 25
[3 favorites +] [!]

I've been confused for the whole of October.
posted by poxandplague at 1:37 AM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I won't be able to look either, the ASPCA's posts are hard enough. They do a lot of rescue work around the world. So remember, if you want to help but don't have time to adopt, you can volunteer at a shelter, be a foster (you can walk dogs!), or even just donate. ASPCA in the States, Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, SPA in France, RSPCA UK, RSPCA Australia, and of course Humane Society International.

If you need a bit of heartening, here are four senior chihuahuas with a kitten, all rescues. Beware high concentrations of tongue cuteness.
posted by fraula at 1:41 AM on October 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

This might be the most unclicked link in Metafilter history.
posted by aclevername at 4:58 AM on October 25, 2016 [18 favorites]

Hoo boy. They are good good dogs, every one. They remind me so very much of my family's dog, who was rescued off the streets of Buenos Aires and ended up living with my parents, then my brother, then my parents again, then me and my family. She had the same eyes as a couple of the dogs in the portraits. Despite having a bit of a hardened heart towards euthanasia from working in veterinary medicine, this is making me tear up a bit.

Good good doggos and puppers.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:20 AM on October 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

.
posted by michswiss at 5:23 AM on October 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm another that can't click this link, I don't do well with tales or photos of tragic dog events.

Last week our office manager came to my office, I was doing paperwork. She said "another therapist's (who wasn't in that day) client is sitting in the waiting room sobbing, we've already told her that her therapist isn't here but she says she can't leave. Could you talk to her?". I said yes and took her into my office.

She proceeded to tell me that her small dog was with her husband at the lake, the dog was standing on their pontoon boat when a neighbor's dog charged away from it's person, leaped on the boat and ravaged her small dog. Her husband couldn't get between them fast enough. The vet spent two days trying to save her dog and failed. The client then took out her phone and showed me the picture of her injured dog.

She and I spent about the next 20 minutes sobbing together while I tried to assure her that her small pup was at peace now.

Nope, I'm not clicking that link, but thanks for posting this as a reminder that it is good if we do all we can to save these friends.
posted by HuronBob at 5:41 AM on October 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

Who's a shitty human race? We are! We are!

So sad the eyes....
posted by Cocodrillo at 6:08 AM on October 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Just rip my @#$%ing heart out, why don'cha??!?!??!

(There are days humanity disappoints me more than usual)
posted by prepmonkey at 6:38 AM on October 25, 2016

I'm glad this exists. But I am not crying all day. No view here, sorry.
posted by Splunge at 7:09 AM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Who would look at this intentionally?
posted by amtho at 7:13 AM on October 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

. Don't click, don't read. They are all good dogs, every one.
posted by cass at 7:28 AM on October 25, 2016

If you want to do something for homeless pets, your best bet is to donate to your local animal shelters, and to not support breeders and puppy mills, which are responsible for much of the problem.

The ASPCA and the HSI/HSUS do some good work, but they do not operate animal shelters. The ASPCA does have one small shelter in NYC, but it's only one of many shelters in that area, and the HSUS doesn't even do that much. They are both primarily lobbying organizations, like PETA, and they're both very well funded.

Many local shelters, the ones that do shelter homeless animals, are hurting for funds, in part because of donor confusion, where people send money to these national lobbying organizations thinking it's going to them when it isn't.
posted by ernielundquist at 7:43 AM on October 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

I looked. I have these weird feelings about witness. These dogs are no longer alive, but, still.

The fourth gives us the side-eye. Trying not to take it personally. But I need to get another dog.

.
posted by allthinky at 8:17 AM on October 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

I agree about witnessing, and I just made myself look. I can distance myself some because they all lived half a world away from me, and there would have been no reasonable way for me to find them and bring them home with me, but I could see any single one of those dogs being my dog, and either one of my dogs could have ended up the same way. Both of my dogs are what's commonly called 'shelter trash,' which around here means pit bull looking mutts of unknown origins, who were picked up as adults. It looks like, in Taiwan, their 'shelter trash' look more like retriever mixes. Every culture has its pariah dogs.

I also have a thing against calling it 'euthanasia' when animals are killed simply for being homeless. Not to demonize the people who are in the unenviable position of having to carry out the deed, but dogs as a species exist only because of humans, and it's on every single one of us when they suffer and die.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:54 AM on October 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

This is amazing. I'm glad to have seen it.

And I'm trying hard to assume good intentions on the part of those who refuse to do so.
posted by eotvos at 9:35 AM on October 25, 2016

And I'm trying hard to assume good intentions on the part of those who refuse to do so.

There's a balance between feeling/perceiving and doing. Lately, and for some people, there's so much feeling that it's overwhelming and actually prevents action. For others, maybe something like this could be motivating.

Witnessing is important, too. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.
posted by amtho at 9:44 AM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's very difficult, and perhaps problematic, to assume anyone's "intentions" until you've walked in their shoes. And, "intentions" are not necessarily "good intentions" or "bad intentions", it's not that black and white.
posted by HuronBob at 10:16 AM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I sympathize with people who don't want to look. I did look because I think it's important, but there are plenty of things I don't do for selfish reasons.

I volunteer with animal welfare groups, but I don't work directly with sheltered dogs because I don't think I'm tough enough to handle that. I currently volunteer doing some pretty filthy, difficult manual labor, but I do it at a no kill shelter without dogs. I just wouldn't be able to leave dogs behind every day, especially if I knew and interacted with the individual dogs who were dying because of it. So I do other things because I know my limits, and because the work I do does help, and it takes some of the burden off other organizations that are doing the work I can't make myself do .

I do think it's important to remember the dogs who die from our neglect, and I do think it's important to speak up when others forget. But I completely understand people knowing their limits.

As long as you know, and as long as you're helping in the best way you can. If you can't look, donate what you can to your local shelter for the people who look at it every day. And don't support those who are working against them.
posted by ernielundquist at 10:17 AM on October 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

I looked because I felt the photographer was trying to bring awareness to a painful thing. He was doing what he could for the dogs right before their death: love, scratches, and comfort. Some of those dogs really needed some comfort. I understand why others couldn't . It was a little rough.

I support animal rescues but cannot work in them. It is too painful. I want to bring them all home and my dog would really hate having siblings.
posted by cairnoflore at 10:34 AM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thank you for your thoughtful comments, ernielundquist.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:47 AM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have worked in veterinary medicine for a long time (though on the non-medical side of things) and when small talk comes around to jobs, many people express a desire to work in the field because they love animals so much. One thing I always try to tell them is that it is very possible to love animals too much to work in veterinary medicine. You see a lot of very difficult things in this field, from sickness and death, to neglect and cruelty.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:45 AM on October 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

And I'm trying hard to assume good intentions on the part of those who refuse to do so.

I'm going to try to be nice here. I don't care if you assume or not. Having lost several pets in my life, I have trouble with things like this. I had my Quaker parrot die in my hands. I can't watch videos with that kind of parrot anymore. I have lost two dogs in very much the same situation, but they were old and had to be put down, for their own good.

Recently I lost my mother. Alzheimers and lung cancer. Not a pet, I know.

But right now I'm at the point that if I looked at these pictures I'd spend the rest of the day crying hysterically. So trust me if I say I'm not looking for any more negative stimuli. I can cry at the drop of a hat these days. I got teary eyed when a character in a game I'm playing lost her uncle.

Assume away. You know what assume means, right?
posted by Splunge at 11:49 AM on October 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

I love dogs. A good read on dogs is ["What is a dog?"](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo18378250.html). I think a lot of the concern people have for these dogs lacks a greater context. That book really turned my head around.

The idea that the life of a dog should involve being born into the household of a human, then living with human care and medical attention (with rather minimal dog interaction / mating) till death is a relatively modern invention. Most dogs are animals that evolved to scavenge human waste and live along side us, not under us. Remove all human waste, and billions (yes billions) of dogs would starve and disappear on the order of months. The species would have lost its main niche.

Only a tiny fraction of dogs who have lived have ever been bred into a specific breed, or have led the life most of us think they should lead in a human household. Most dogs are born on the streets. These dogs face a rough life as juveniles, often dying as a result of not being able to compete with mature dogs. If they live to maturity, they can enjoy the prime of their life, including participating in the rich social structure of "village" dogs, as these are termed by the Coppingers.

When wild animals die of old age it is often either starvation or illness that does them in. They are too old or sick to feed or forage. It's not a way I'd like to go but it is the natural way of things. Personally, I'd rather go that way than being kept on life support undergoing, say, painful chemotherapy, for months or years on end as we do to our own.

If you were apply the standards for dogs to the animal kingdom at large you would arrive at the conclusion that every last animal needs human intervention, and that the fact that we don't having nursing homes for elderly capybaras is a severe emergency. Dying isn't pretty for most animals, and neither is living. I'm not sure what the moral answer is here, but my personal feeling is to sympathize with the suffering, but not think of it as an emergency either.

I really recommend reading the book I mentioned above. Just understanding the scope of this problem (and whether it even is a problem) is complicated enough. A lot of solutions really aren't, and intuition tends to drive bad or ineffective policy.

In conclusion, dog mortality is a land of contrasts.
posted by sp160n at 1:55 PM on October 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Mod note: One comment deleted. This needs to not get personal. People are completely free to choose not to look at things that are for-super-obvious-reasons upsetting. There's no mystery about why someone might find this content upsetting, and no reason to make weird accusations or counter-accusations about it.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:26 PM on October 25, 2016

Beautiful project. From the first link:

He played with all of them, gave them treats, hugged them and talked to them. He made sure that they didn’t feel any fear; and accompanied each dog, until the moment that they were finally injected with the blue coloured liquid… “If they are scheduled to be put down, and there is nothing we can do about it at least we can give them love, comfort and dignity” the photographer says.

I also work in veterinary medicine, and I have often comforted and distracted animals during euthanasia when their humans are unable to do so. I think the photographer is doing a service by witnessing their deaths and capturing these portraits.

And I agree, sp160n, it's a complicated problem, and there are more urgent problems, but it's not like we can just opt out because it's all too sad and do nothing. There is a difference between euthanizing due to illness or old age and euthanizing as the primary means of population control. Whatever historical relationship humans have had with dogs is irrelevant to how we decide to treat them today. There is no natural order absent of human impact anymore. They are capable of suffering, and we are capable of either compounding or minimizing that suffering through how we decide to allocate our resources.

And why shouldn't we apply the standards for dogs to the animal kingdom at large? I'm not advocating for a name, a cute bow, and health insurance for every animal. Obviously we have a special bond with dogs, but animals have value independent of whether or not a human happens to love them. And I hope that someday we, as a species, will figure out how to extend the kind of compassion shown in this thread to all of the animals, dogs or otherwise, that are routinely killed for human convenience.
posted by crone islander at 4:31 PM on October 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

I adopted my own dog from 'death row'. She is lying with her nose jammed into my armpit as I type this. Every day, we do a thing where I smooth her face and look into her eyes, and she looks back at me with the purest expression of love and trust.

I looked at every single one of these photos, and it broke me. Thank you for posting, though. Thank you.
posted by Salamander at 5:45 PM on October 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

crone islander: I suppose my point wasn't that we should opt out because it's too sad, but rather to ask ourself what sorts of sadness are inherent in life, and what our boundaries are as a species. I think there's a certain hubris in assuming we have a moral imperative to end the suffering of all species. There's an implicit assumption in these conversations that dogs are creatures humans take care of. People tend not to have this attitude toward other animals.

If we contrast dogs to a more 'wild' species, say Lions, I think it'd be very troubling to say that we should enforce our morals on Lion society. Male Lions practice infanticide in some situations. Who are we as humans to enforce our own morals on them? Should we rescue these cubs and relocate them? If the Lions are in a zoo I think we'd say yes, but if it was the wild, I think for many people this seems like human meddling in a domain that is not our own.

The question of what to do with stray dogs is in part so fascinating because it occurs at the intersection of our domain and the domain of another species. I don't think there are any clear answers here.

What should we do with 'stray' dogs? We could spay/neuter them and confine them to some stray dog area. But then we've mutilated these dogs in ways they may not appreciate. However if we don't prohibit their reproduction we'll quickly have more dogs than can be supported by the planet. Clearly, what a dog is at an evolutionary level depends on some level of mortality / suffering to control population. We also know empirically that unless the original food source that supported the stray population is suppressed (think human refuse) the population will quickly rebound and we'll be in the same situation. This is a nearly impossible thing from a practical level often times.

The important thing to understand, I think, is that this is all a balancing act, and that to some extent the placement of the line will be arbitrary.
posted by sp160n at 8:18 PM on October 25, 2016

Dogs and humans co-evolved. Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around. We would not be what we are today without dogs, and I feel that we owe them special treatment.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:40 PM on October 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

I see the argument for dogs living alongside humans, and I've heard of communities where that sort of thing is the norm. But in a lot of places, including where I live, that ship has sailed.

I live in a residential area surrounded by open spaces and protected areas, so we have a fair amount of wildlife around here, including a whole lot of coyotes. It's a local thing, and always has been, but it's also always been a bit of a learning curve. We have constant public awareness efforts, including detailed information about what to do when you encounter coyotes, and PSAs about keeping your pets indoors, especially at night, but we still have problems sometimes. They pretty regularly kill people's cats and small or even medium sized dogs, and we've even had some that got aggressive with people. A little kid got bitten a few years ago, and they'll sometimes start getting bold and acclimated enough to stalk people, and then someone has to go in and try to find and kill the aggressive ones.

And those are coyotes. They're wild animals, they're nocturnal, and they did not evolve as human companions. Having feral domestic dogs wandering around the community would never ever fly here. It may well be natural, but it would also be natural for them to attack humans sometimes, especially children. It's hard enough to get people to accept the risks of coyotes. There's just no way that would happen here, or in many other places.

So acknowledging that this is not fair, which I pretty much agree with, we need solutions that will work that people can live with.

Humans are pretty bossy. We get our way a lot, and rarely even consider other species' rights to live as they choose. I don't see that changing.

However, it's also worthwhile to point out that it's not a one sided relationship, where dogs are made to be dependent on us. They did evolve alongside us, but we also evolved alongside them. Our relationship is symbiotic. Sure, they need us, especially in certain cultures, but we also need them. We have a very strong interspecies bond, and because we're so intractably bossy and controlling, it is pretty much on us to help them out, not just because of some overarching dominionist scheme, but also because they are our friends and companions. They take care of us in many ways a lot better than we take care of them, and overall, they deserve a lot better than what they're getting. They deserve to have us understand them better, to value them more, and to care for them like members of our families and communities, because that is exactly what they are.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:46 AM on October 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sorry, Splunge (and everyone else) for being obnoxious in my post above. My snarky comment about assuming good intentions was driven by a frustration with a world that often refuses to face the consequences of the collective decisions it makes; but in this context it was misplaced and offensive. I'm sorry both for being an ass and for derailing a thread about a fantastic project.
posted by eotvos at 12:29 PM on October 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Wow I'm tearing up just reading the posts in here. Can't click the link, sorry Johnny Wallflower. All our dogs are rescue dogs and we've had some really wonderful ones. Each one unique, each one bringing something different and special into our life. Shelter dogs are awesome.
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 8:52 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]