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Dog Lady and the Story of America's Forgotten People and Pets
by Carol Mithers
Book Reviewed by:Rethinking Rescue boldly confronts two of the biggest challenges of our time — poverty and homelessness — in asking the question: Who deserves the love of a pet?
In Los Angeles's most underserved communities, Lori Weise is known as the Dog Lady, the woman who's spent decades caring for people in poverty and the animals that love them. Long before anyone else, Weise grasped that animal and human suffering are inextricably connected and created a new rescue narrative: an enduring safety net empowering pet owners and providing resources to reduce the number of pets coming into shelters.
Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America's Forgotten People and Pets unites the causes of animal welfare and social justice, moving between Weise's story and that of the larger U.S. rescue movement. Through captivating storytelling and investigative reporting, Carol Mithers examines the consequences of bias within this overwhelmingly white movement, where an overemphasis on placing animals in affluent homes disregards pet owners in poverty. Weise's innovative and ultimately triumphant efforts revealed a better way.
As cities across the country witness some of the worst housing crises in history, and as the population of unhoused people and pets continues to skyrocket, Rethinking Rescue offers a story of compassion and hope.
With vividly rendered accounts of the people and dogs Weise has met over the years, the book details her on-the-ground work in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods, from her early days of forging community connections with homeless pet owners in Skid Row to her pioneering intervention program at the South LA shelter that kept thousands of pets safely with their owners and helped bring about a paradigm shift in the concept of animal rescue, inspiring similar programs across the country. Overall, it's a fascinating portrait of a remarkable animal advocate and a compelling examination of the complex ways that animal welfare issues intersect with issues of poverty, inequality, and race. Contrasting the animal rescue movement's compassion toward animals with the callous, punitive attitude all too often exhibited toward impoverished pet owners, Mithers shows how animal welfare and social justice are inextricably linked...continued
Full Review
(930 words)
(Reviewed by Elisabeth Herschbach).
Abigail Disney, filmmaker, philanthropist, and activist
In this compelling and important story, Carol Mithers explores the unexpected impacts of economic inequality on America's pets and pet owners. Highlighting the groundbreaking work of Lori Weise amidst key moments in the larger rescue movement suggests solutions to some of today's central human-animal issues. Helaine Olen, Omidyar Network Reporter in Residence 2024 and author of Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry
Through the unforgettable story of one amazing woman, Rethinking Rescue tells the uplifting but often heartbreaking story of how the modern animal rescue movement has both saved and failed our nation's dogs—and their humans. As it takes us on a journey into a world where animal welfare meets and collides with America's seemingly intractable inequality, the book asks some hard questions. It's a haunting and compelling read, one that's all but impossible to put down till the final page. Sandy Banks, veteran Los Angeles Times staff writer chronicling life on the city's streets
Animal lovers everywhere can take heart from the story of Lori Weise, whose trailblazing crusade brought social justice to the animal welfare brigade, and illuminated the bond between cast-off animals and the unhoused people who love them.
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.
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