Stories: Magazine Stories: Animal Shelters

"What's A Dog Worth?"

(link to a Web version)

In a quarter century of journalism I have written about all manner of tragedy and injustice--accidents, disasters, derelictions, innocents caught in crossfires--but no story of mine has generated as much response, ever, as "What's a Dog Worth?"

Upon its publication, in the May 2006 edition of Los Angeles, the magazine was deluged with letters, e-mails, phone calls, and requests to reproduce the article. "Thank you for delivering such a painful truth," wrote one reader. "I felt sick after reading it," added another. "This wasn't just some story about stray dogs," a third told us. "It was a commentary on who we have become--and I for one am very scared." It is not that the public is callous to the suffering of fellow humans or, as some have suggested, that we care more about pets than about people. But animals, and especially dogs, as our companions and guardians and rescuers, expect the best of us, or at least better than we, as a society, have shown ourselves capable of giving--and that discrepancy, between what we want to believe about ourselves and how we actually behave, tends to get under our skin.

The photograph on the left belongs to the final L.A. Magazine assignment undertaken by the late, extraordinary James Fee.