J. TODD FOSTER: If reality offends you, then start reading comic books

Our job each day is to hold up a mirror to society. Some of you choose to turn away from the mirror because you don’t want to see reality. Many of you don’t like what’s in the mirror, but rather than try to change the image, you want to break the mirror (this newspaper).

The article last Sunday on a typical euthanasia day at the Sullivan County Animal Shelter indeed was heart wrenching. It was supposed to be. But I do not buy the argument that the article was gratuitously graphic in its description of how the dogs and cats are killed.

The article, by police reporter Claire Galofaro, was eloquent in its simplistic, matter-of-fact recounting of what one reader termed an “animal holocaust.” And in terms of narrative, long-form storytelling, it was one of the best – albeit tragic – stories we’ve ever published. It also hammered home an important point: Irresponsible pet owners are a national disgrace, and in no other region in the country is the behavior worse than in the rural South.

We’re either too lazy to get our pets spayed or neutered, or oblivious to what happens when one of them is allowed to roam loose.

Here are some sobering statistics uncovered by Claire: “One unfixed cat and her unfixed offspring will create 420,000 cats in seven years. An unspayed dog becomes 67,000 dogs in six years,” she wrote. Up to 8 million unwanted pets enter animal shelters each year, and about half of those never leave alive.

I was especially touched by how compassionately Claire portrayed the inmates who volunteer at the shelter and are forced to participate in the euthanasia because no one else will. Phil Lane, supervisor of Sullivan County Animal Control, and veterinarian Dr. Basil A. Jones came off, deservedly, as heroic figures forced into the worst of duties. Their love of the shelter cast-offs was undeniable and touching.

Reader feedback was swift and strong, but in a surprise, was overwhelmingly positive. Of those who did e-mail, comment online, telephone or snail mail, I can’t recall a single response from a man, however. One of my Facebook friends speculated that men bottle up their emotions; you don’t have to be a woman to know that’s true.

The all-women responses, many of them delivered through tears over the phone, ranged from “excellent” to “EEEEEwwww!!!”

I knew the story would be a tear jerker when I saw the red eyes of City Editor Susan Cameron. I managed to remain dispassionate – owed, I’m afraid, to a career spent in large part to uncovering unspeakable atrocities man has inflicted upon animals. I’m not an animal lover, but an animal liker. Yet I also subscribe to Ghandi’s theory: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” (That is actually my second-favorite Ghandi quote. Here’s my first: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”)

If you think Claire’s story was sickening, you should have read the lede on my 1997 story about abuse at a greyhound racing track in North Idaho. The story opened with an after-race party where trainers, drunk on beer and high on cocaine, entertained themselves by electrocuting one of the losing dogs. They used an electric wire placed in the dog’s rear end.

When my city editor at the time read the piece for the Spokane, Wash.-based The Spokesman-Review, this grizzled, raspy-voiced, chain-smoker summoned me to his cubicle. “Todd,” he said, “we can’t run this lede; our readers will puke in their oatmeal.” I fired back: “Joe, how would you lede a story about animal cruelty?”

The lede stood and Joe Fenton championed it right into the newspaper. The state of Idaho initiated an immediate investigation and eventually forced the track to shut down dog racing. This beautiful facility now hosts bingo and televised horse and dog race wagering – from other tracks.

Our readers got off easy last Sunday; there was nothing cruel or inhumane about “euthanasia day” at the animal shelter. What is cruel is the number of thoughtless pet owners who force well-meaning county officials and inmate trustees to host – and taxpayers to fund – “euthanasia day” in the first place.

Yet, one reader e-mailed: “My issue is the blatant assault to the sensitivities of animal lovers and to the reading audience of your newspaper. This was published on a weekend, probably to reach more readers. However, children were more likely to see this also. Reading this article could be traumatic to a child. If the point was to increase awareness by disgust, consider the mission accomplished. Denial of the problem is not where reasonable people are. Simply put, a family newspaper is not the place to read about animal holocaust.”

Is a family newspaper the place to have read about the Jewish Holocaust? These two situations are in no way analogous, of course. I will never equate pet horrors to those suffered by Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany. But if more people had read about the Jewish Holocaust in “family” newspapers, it could have been stopped long before it was.

This, and every other newspaper, is the perfect place to read about an irresponsible, animal-obsessed society that is forcing the use of tax dollars for the tragic disposal of innocent pets. Man’s best friend deserves better.

Now that we’ve been educated, maybe we can learn from our mistakes before millions of new garbage bags are filled with the carcasses of unwanted pets.

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at jfoster@bristolnews.com or (276) 645-2513.