Should I put my dog down to help the homeless?

Question

I have a dog, and it costs $200 a month to sustain it, in terms of dog food and other miscellany. He's 2.5 years old, a very good boy and I value him as a great companion.

Recently my friend mentioned a program to help the homeless in my town. Winter is approaching (I'm in the Southern hemisphere) and every year, several homeless people die from exposure. The program allows people to buy a special winter coat for $90, which can also be used as a warm sleeping bag, and arranges to have it delivered to a homeless person in need, to provide a way for them to have some warmth and protection from the element in the harsh, cold season.

My friend pointed that putting my dog down would cost $50, and I could use the money that I wouldn't be spending on my dog to buy one coat the first month, and two coats the month after that. I could potentially save the lives of as many as 10 people.

I love my dog and the thought of him being put down is horrible. But on a purely logical level, it's hard to argue that the life of a dog is more valuable than the life of a human. And how could the life of one dog be more valuable than 10 people, even together with the mental anguish I would suffer at the loss of my companion?

What does modern moral philosophy and ethics say about the correct way to act in this situation?

Answer 1

"But on a purely logical level, it's hard to argue that the life of a dog is more valuable than the life of a human".

This intuition seems key to your problem. I say intuition, because logic doesn't have anything to say about whether your dog is more or less valuable than the life of a human unless you include other premises to any such argument. As an example, such premises might take the form of:

"A dog has X value because...".

"A human has X value because..."

If you manage to complete these sentences (not necessarily an easy task by any means), then you might be able to draw a logical conclusion along the lines of:

"Therefore I should value a human/dog more".

Note however, that this doesn't solve the problem. Let's say you do manage to place some kind of descriptive value upon a human life. If this value was sufficient to lead you to action, you would probably make all kinds of sacrifices to ensure your behaviour - as much as possible - led to the saving of human lives and the betterment of human lives. But this is fraught with difficulty.

For example, the $90.00 you might spend on a winter coat for the homeless in your area could obtain exponentially more value for money from a human wellbeing perspective if it were spent in a third world country in order to save the lives of starving children. How could you justify spending so much money to help one person in your area when you have the potential to help many more people in another area?

The plain fact is, at some level we all make choices about what is of value to us, and the people and creatures closest to us tend to rank waaaay higher up in the hierarchy of our obligations than people and creatures we don't know. Some would argue we are morally obliged to prioritise those for whom we have a direct responsibility and/or affection. Others might argue such an attitude is selfish and perpetuates inequality. Some would argue spending money on a pet when it could be better used elsewhere is immoral. Some would argue than most pets possess no trait or lack any particular trait which deems them of less value than a human (See 'Name the Trait').

Recent posts address the work of Peter Singer, a philosopher who has spent much of his professional career tackling issues such as the one you raise. Two recent PSE posts involve this work, specifically Famine, Affluence and Morality:

• About an argument in Famine, Affluence and Morality, abd
• Question on Famine, Affluence and Morality.

Observe that you might have set up a false dichotomy of sorts, in which owning a pet is an either/or proposition versus helping the homeless. There are likely other sacrifices you could make (I'm not suggesting they would be easy) which would allow you to keep your dog and help the homeless.

This doesn't solve the problem though does it? Even were you to make such sacrifice, the option still remains open to you to make more of a sacrifice, which may or may not include the sacrifice of your pet.

Have you considered the notion of sustainable philanthropy? What is worth more to others in the long run? Short bursts of charitable splurges when you have some excess income, or sustained, gradually increasing charity as you increase your means over time?

Regardless of what you choose, one outcome is likely. At some point, you will draw a line between what you are willing to sacrifice in order to give. Unless you are a very unusual person, this line will fall short - well short - of what you could actually afford to give; of what it is actually possible to sacrifice.

As this answer to another post claims:

It seems that regardless of what philosophical manoeuvres we are capable of making, it is difficult to deny that for those of us who subscribe to an ideal of fairness:

• Given there are reputable, proven, independently-rated charities via which we can demonstrably provide for the wellbeing of people who are truly destitute,
• Given that we have the means to donate to such charities far more than we already do,
• We are contributing - via neglect - to the ongoing, preventable death, disease and sadness of many people we have the capacity to help in transformative ways.
• In doing so, we are failing to pursue an ideal of fairness intrinsic to what our own moral code or compass.

How much this fact bothers you may well determine how you conduct yourself going forward. Just remember that whatever line you choose to draw, you will be of far more use to others - and possibly far happier - if you position yourself to give sustainably over the long term rather than in occasional, relatively inconsequential efforts. And if we take a right to happiness or at least contentedness as axiomatic, then traumatising yourself by giving your pet away (let alone by putting it down, which you should be able to avoid) might not be a moral obligation at all.

Answer 2

Have you considered that your dog may, by making you a happier, healthier person, allow you to earn far more than $200/month? Perhaps without the dog in your life, you would mope more and work less efficiently, and end up not actually saving any money. Perhaps your dog's affection helps you aide the homeless more than you realize.

Even if this is not true in your specific case; I'm making the argument that the utilitarian calculus you're trying to do is rarely simple.

Answer 3

Applying the categorical imperative loosely, it seems unlikely that the homeless people lacking a coat would demand that the OP puts down their dog and spends the money on coats. Similarly it seems unlikely the OP themselves, if becoming homeless, would wish for any pet dog to be put down for getting a coat.

There are many better ways the OP could invest effort of time in raising money or awareness for the issue to save people's lives. That one dog and the homeless people are not directly competing for survival.

Answer 4

Moralism, like the one presented here, usually does no good, especially doesn't achieve enduring improvements if you have a slightly wider look. But of course the concern raised is valid.

Best way to solve such dilemma is to hit the one bringing it up over the head with a categorical imperative. ;)

• "What would happen if we made this a law?"
• "what would happen if all right-thinking people did the same?"
• "What would happen if this became an acceptable way to raise money for other needs?"
• ...

That leads to a lot more questions

• does it really solve the problem
• does it impede a lasting solution
• which other problems are there of similar or greater concern
• etc.

The conclusion imo inevitably is that you should look for a better way to help the homeless than killing your dog. Of course the good solutions usually take longer, and yes, winter is coming.

You can in the meantime take your dog for a walk and try to collect each $5 from 18 people in you neighbourhood. If you do that once a week, you can buy twice as many coats, and still have your dog.

If you don't want to do it alone: take that very moralic friend of yours and some more, and form a club. You collect money, and every homeless who brings along one dollar five times a week for a month, gets a coat.

Answer 5

Perhaps you are under-valuing your dog. There are benefits to the company of a dog that go way beyond the status of a dispensable luxury. Researchgate - Benefits of pet ownership To see this, consider that some homeless people will adopt a dog, making considerable sacrifices to do so. Homeless Advice - Why do homeless people have dogs? Have you taken into account the dog's point of view, given that s/he cannot possibly understand what you are doing?

For most of my life I have owned dogs - and had to say good-bye to them. Does this mean I'm biased or that I know what I'm talking about? I think the latter.

There are benefits to finding a rational justification for one's moral choices and it would be foolish to waste one's charity. But rationality cannot be the whole story. There's no point to a heartless morality. Does your love for your dog and your dog's love for you count for nothing?

I suggest you would be making very doubtful choice to re-home or kill your pet for this reason even though I also accept that homelessness is an excellent cause to support. Other people have suggested that you could possibly find another way to release your money to help the homeless. If you cannot do that, you could give your time by volunteering to help a charity or campaigning to ensure that your government does what I consider it's duty by providing for all of them.

Answer 6

The concept that a human's life is any more valuable than any other form of life is a construct we humans created because, well, we're human. Your concept of morality is also a construct of your environment, upbringing, culture, etc. To claim that saving the life of a homeless individual is a moral obligation is only because you perceive it to be. However, I would argue it depends on something we can't know, which is what that individual (or individuals) will bring in the way of improving the society as a whole in their futures.

Saving someone's life could deeply impact their behavior, and in turn they may be inspired to help others. Or, they may appreciate the jackets but then provide no actual benefit to the rest of humanity. If the latter is the case, you'd have acted immorally to put your dog down, who certainly has been helping at least one individual (you).

Just a final note, homeless people need help and assistance. This question was purely one for gauging morality and was quite obviously hypothetical, and I am not suggesting that people who have either made poor life decisions, suffer from mental illness that prevents them from societal integration, or else were struck with catastrophic misfortune, are not capable of providing great improvement to a community throughout their lives.

Answer 7

Do you go to restaurants, or the cinema? Do you buy any clothes that aren't second-hand? Do you buy anything but the cheapest brand of whatever product you use? Do you live in an apartment or house that's more than just the bare minimum?

These would all be areas one can cut down on, before putting down one's dog, assuming you care about your dog more than you care about the above things.

One could certainly also spend time raising money for charity, or petitioning the government to increase aid for the homeless, or for them to kill the loopholes the ultra-wealthy use to avoid paying any tax, which could very quickly exceed the cost of keeping a dog.

But should you make sacrifices though?

For the question of making sacrifices for the sake of helping others, the generally accepted principle is that you're not obligated to give up all non-necessities (which is also evident by the fact that most people, and most philosophers, live far above their means if able).

My related answer on the question of donating all your possessions (which compares saving a drowning child to saving lives by donating to charity).

In the above answer, I conclude that you should donate some to charity (if able), but you'll need to figure out for yourself how much to donate/sacrifice.

If your conscience is telling you you should do more, it might be that it's asking you to do too much, or it might be that you really should do more. It might also be that it's telling you to do more in one way, when you should be doing more in a different way. That's something only you can figure out or decide.

Answer 8

If I were the homeless man I would resent your blood money even though I would very much need a coat to survive if I didn't have one.

I was intending to write a long argument about imbalance but it's completely unnecessary. It short circuits as the cost is repulsive to the receiver. Some costs are too high to pay.

Answer 9

But on a purely logical level, it's hard to argue that the life of a dog is more valuable than the life of a human.

I agree with you. And if I ever found myself in a situation where a dog and a human were both in cardiac arrest in front of me, I would do CPR to the human, not to the dog. It would be a simple choice, between the life of a human and the life of a dog, and I would choose the life of the human without any hesitation.

But the choice facing you now is different.

Compare the two scenarios:

• Scenario 1. You don't kill your dog. You live a happy life. Maybe once per year or once every two years or once every five years, you save enough money to buy a warm coat for a homeless person.

• Scenario 2. You kill your dog. The first month this saves you $150 and you buy a warm coat for a homeless person. The second month this saves you $200 and you buy two warm coats. In the third month, the sadness of having lost your dog, along with the horror of having killed your own dog, catches up with you. You become depressed. You become isolated, shutting your friends out and barely able to cook meals for yourself. Disgusted with yourself, you never help a homeless person again in your whole life.

Now you have more arguments in favour of scenario 1. And in fact, you probably already were aware of those arguments, maybe not in words, but in your guts. Which is why you wouldn't have killed your dog - your instinct tells you it cannot be a good solution.

Answer 10

We could... Take the money from one extremely rich person, and help possibly millions who are facing starvation, etc.

Or, a very rich person could... Do it themselves.

There are enough rich people that this could continue indefinitely when the problem reoccurred. Perhaps we should actually solve the problems? Whose job is it to do so? "Am I my brother's keeper" and all that.

Answer 11

My answer is that it would be unequivocally immoral in this case.

The life of a dog, let alone one you adopted, has moral worth rendering moral obligations towards it. It's not just a means to an end, but has its own moral value.

Indeed a God inspired moral outlook would claim that the dog is not merely a means to some greater to good, but to an extent an end in of itself. And therefore a wrong action towards it can't be justified by any kind of calculation of benefit, except in very extreme cases perhaps (in such extreme cases, such an action, while harming the dog of course, in being justified, wouldn't be a moral wrong).

Admittedly in this mode of thinking I've elevated the dog's moral status.

It might be the case that a dog's moral worth is lesser, and it is not a wrong to kill it in the interests of humans in a broader set of cases.

So you have to ask yourself: to what extent a dog, let alone one you adopted, has a moral worth, making him an end in its own right? And even if you permit that as an animal his life can be forfeit in the interests of humans, in some cases, so cost-benefit analysis can have greater validity, in principle, you still have to ask yourself is this remotely such a case (and does it make a difference that it's a dog that you adopted and trusts you)?

It sounds like a good solution would be to find a new home for it (perhaps you can even offer to pay the new owners $200 for the first four months).

In my view, you can give it to a new family, but to kill it would be highly immoral in those circumstances even if the dog is assigned no more moral worth than a person with the average moral intuition would assign it.

Edit:

I later saw that you said you love the dog. So no need to even give it away. Again if the dog has no moral worth in of itself, like an inanimate object, you can trade it freely. Once a moral worth is assigned to him, it may the kind persons are typically assigned with, making cost-benefit calculations nearly always wrong. Or it might be assigned a more modest worth as typically assigned to home animals, which more freely justifies profitable trade off at the cost of harming the animal. But even in the latter case, nearly everyone assigns a home dog a greater value than would make permissible the killing of a home dog except in pretty extraordinary circumstances. I'd go with the moral sense of the majority on this one.

PPS - response to a comment:

"This question appears to argue that a dog's life has intrinsic value conferred to it by God. However, from my limited familiarity with the Bible: There is indeed a commandment "Thou shalt not kill", but it is usually understood to mean "kill humans". My understanding of Christianity is that killing animals is not necessarily a sin."

"intrinsic value conferred to it by God" - I would have said that God anchors that moral truth in the fabric of reality, and it emanates outward like an electric field, rather than gives directly.

Here I used God as anchor of moral value.

If you don't accept that at all, then you have to ask yourself, does a dog have moral value anyway? And if yes, is it the elevated kind or the kind more commonly associated with animals (historically)? If you answer that it has no moral value, or such moral value that permits killing it readily, I'd say that you're going against the moral intuition of most people, so perhaps you might want to look further.

If you accept God as an anchor of moral value, I think any theistic believer would argue that it follows that at a minimum animals have to be treated with kindness and respect as they do have some moral value. It might not be the elevated moral value associated with persons, but even on the lower rung, it is sufficient to prevent the killing of an animal under the circumstances described (especially in light of the trust bond between an owner and any pet, let alone a dog).

And specifically to Christianity, while I agree with you that killing animals even in cost-benefit circumstances is understood to be permitted (even the killing of humans is sometimes understood to be permitted and justified too), it depends greatly on the circumstances. In these circumstances, of first taking an animal to your trust as member of the household, and then "volunteering" it to be killed, while presumably you don't significantly deprive yourself in the process, is something that's sooner in the spirit of Mammon and such than in spirit of Christ.

Answer 12

I would like to add a point that most of the other answers don't seem to have addressed (except for this one): this argument assumes that spending money doesn't help anyone but you, which isn't true.

By way of example, think how many people are employed by purchasing, for example, an iPhone - there are factory workers in various countries (many of which are poor countries), engineers that work on the phone itself, a large number of vendors supplying various other items who also support employees (including yours truly), people who work at cellular companies, even people who work at mining companies who provide raw goods. In short, a single iPhone purchase that initially appears to only benefit you actually helps to provide jobs to thousands of people.

If everyone stopped buying all but the most minimal possible set of goods like Peter Singer suggests, a lot of people would be thrown out of their jobs, which would reduce the number of people who were capable of giving to charity and increase the number of people who needed to be recipients of charity. The net result would be an increase in poverty.

I'm going to make what may be a controversial claim (but one which I believe is hard to dispute): economic growth has lifted far more people out of poverty and increased our collective happiness and well-being far more than charity ever has.

That being said, Peter Singer's arguments only work because he doesn't look at all the effects. If you look at all of the effects, it's self-defeating.

Edit: To clarify from the comments, I'm not saying that buying an iPhone is just as moral as donating to charity, nor am I supporting utilitarianism here. I'm merely pointing out that, if we are trying to determine which action is "more moral" based purely on the effects (which is the argument that the OP's friend is extending), we need to look at all of the reasonably foreseeable effects, not just the obvious and immediate ones. Doing so results in a very different analysis.

Answer 13

First of all, it depends on your view of animal life. If you justify eating animals for food then you already believe that the death of an animal is morally justified to sustain human lives. It is estimated that one cow provides enough meat for 2300 meals. In terms of sustaining human lives, you'd get more bang for your buck by killing a cow than your pet dog.

But in your dilemma, there is no certainty that the death will help anyone. You said, "I could potentially save the lives of as many as 10 people". So the definite death of your dog could only potentially save the lives of 10 people. You may kill your dog and then save nobody's life, in which case you've needlessly murdered your animal.

If you are happy to proceed on the basis that potentially helping is reason enough, you would have to consider other possible 'potential' outcomes. Buying warm coats for homeless people may well be a great idea in the short term, but you're not actually housing them - you're just helping them to remain on the streets. Could their remaining on the streets for longer expose them to worse risks, such as exposure to substance abuse or crime? Ironically, lots of homeless people seem to keep dogs for company - will you be buying coats for the dogs, too? If not, how many dogs could potentially die as a result of being on the streets with their owners, all because you had your dog put down?

Answer 14

This is a false equivalence fallacy.

The homeless people in your city and your dog have no relation to each other whatsoever. Your friend artificially creates a relation by associating both of them with a monetary factor, then exaggerates that from "provide a coat" to "save a life", which again aren't the same things. He's also making a category error, but I'll leave that be.

Since you mention logic, let's look at that:

1. What is the causal relation between a homeless person having a coat to their survival chance? This is not a pure causality - other factors play a role. Not having a coat is not a 100% guarantee of death and neither is having a coat a 100% guarantee of survival.
2. The value of your contribution should be multiplied by that factor. Most likely, you do not save one life per coat donated, but some fraction of a life.
3. Purely logically speaking, what is the value of your dog compared to the value of a homeless person? Which metric do we want to use? Contribution to society? That's not going to end well for the homeless. Let's not go down that lane or we might end up with a proposal for putting down the homeless and investing money saved into animal shelters.

Yes, that's harsh. The conclusion is: Explore this line of thinking at your peril. We can't make a logical decision without having a value judgement on life.

Assuming we don't want to attribute some quantity to different lives, our alternative is to simply consider every life worth saving. But then, putting down a dog (taking a life) is immediately a non-option. Unless we are ok with different quantities of life "values" in some way (see 3 above where that leads) we can't consider it.

The cost of your dog is inconsequential in this. The question becomes why you, and also your friend, don't make this contribution. The dog is a distraction in that question. There are most likely other things in your (and your friends!) life that cost a similar amount and are not strictly necessary to survive.

Then why not donate everything you (or your friend!) earn and live on next-to-nothing? There is an ethical decision you (both) already made: That your personal comfort is more important than the homeless. If you already made that decision, the dog is just one of many comfort factors.

As to why almost all of us have made that decision, that's a different question.

Answer 15

I think the original question is moot. This is only a decision that has to be made if a situation occurred where it was literally between the life of the dog or a homeless person. As that is not the case here, the simplest answer is, find the money elsewhere if you want to donate to the homeless.

Answer 16

How about you give your home and dog to someone who is homeless and lonely. Optionally you could put yourself down.

Better still, tell your friend to give all their stuff to the homeless and jump off the nearest bridge.

This sounds as though I am being rude. I'm not, I am just bluntly pointing out that either of my suggestions makes as much sense as your friend's idea.

Answer 17

We are going to suppose that there is a modern and universal ethical norm that dictates that you must sacrifice your dog to save several poor people, based on the fact that a human is worth more than an animal. Immediately afterwards you should sacrifice your oven, which is obviously worth less than a human and consumes electricity to save and save more poor people, and then your microwave, and then your car, going so far as to sell your house and live in a shack on the mountain, which would make you, and your children if you have one, in the long run poor, but you can rest easy, because another rich man will follow your same path starting by sacrificing his dog... We all know that the world does not work like that, but come on, it would be nice to see where it takes us.

It is only a reduction to the absurd, but in a certain way it shows how dangerous it can be to apply a logic of weights of the type "A is worth more than B". At some point on this fictitious and crazy path you will have to say "stop" or you will end your life and the lives of your loved ones, and if you do, why not leave your dog alone from the beginning?

I think that although in current modern ethics it may seem valid that a human is worth more than a dog and leaving aside the annoying question of whether 10 dogs, or 100 dogs, or all the dogs in the world are worth more than a single human, It is a "relative" issue, that is, it depends. A human life is worth, in general, more than that of a dog, as modern ethics seems to indicate, however, it is not absolutely true or absolutely always applicable. So we could say that what ethics seeks is to dictate a series of behaviors that are apparently acceptable, but that are not determinative and that should not always be applied by law, but rather depending on the circumstances under risk of falling into the absurd.

That said, consider what it means to put a premise as true as the engine of your life and how far you are willing to go.

I think it is a mistake to live thinking about "what ethics dictates" because the only thing that ethics should dictate is "the obligation to weigh and assess all things and all facts, to try to do the most correct thing". So from this point of view, you have already fulfilled more than enough when considering whether or not you should put your dog down. The decision you make later is up to you and not to ethics (unless you want to end up in a hut, or haunted by a severe depression) as long as you try to do the best humanly or circumstantially possible.

Answer 18

This is a false dilemma. The two options are not mutually exclusive. This is what philosophy can say.

One can both help the homeless and keep the dog alive. In fact the dog itself can also help the homeless, eg by keeping them company, cheering them up or by some homeless earning money to take care of it. Possibilities are endless!

Even true theoretical moral dilemmas (like the trolley problem), are not necessarily practically true dilemmas. In practice, either the probability of taking place is close to zero, or even if it does, the options are not both realizable, ie one option is realizable whereas the other is not practically realizable. Thus there is no moral dilemma in practice.

In this case it is not even a true theoretical dilemma, since, as mentioned, the options are not mutually exclusive.

He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.

-- John the Baptist

Answer 19

While making others happy, the work you are going to do should also make you happy. When you put down your dog, your companion, you can never be happy. So what you can do is to help the homeless and your beloved. So you can reduce the daily expenses of the dog and help the homeless as much as possible. You don't have to worry about how much you spend on the homeless. Happiness is also important when doing charity work. And that charity works should ultimately lead you to bliss.

You may have understood the meaning of the two inseparable terms that come with the highest Bliss -- Truth and Goodness. To reach this destination is the ultimate goal of all philanthropy and human life, no matter what religions say. When some one reaches this ultimate goal he will understand the true meaning of love and care (here, regarding the dog and the homeless). I believe you have got a philosophical or logical answer or reason from this short answer.

Answer 20

It's too difficult for any of us to save the whole world. Most of us can pull the weight of ourselves and maybe one or two others max. And for someone who's quite a burden with a drug or alcohol problem, it may take TEN people just to pull the weight of that one person.

I guess the best thing is to just know your limits and make your little corner of the world the best you can make it. If you can only pull the weight of a dog and not the weight of a homeless person, then pull that. And if you can donate a few bucks or a few hours here and there to the homeless, then do that too. But don't ruin your own joy and get rid of a dog you love just to make someone else happy. It will only make you resent them later.

Answer 21

According to certain politico-economical views (e.g. the Neoclassic Economic Theory),

poverty is a decision.

Neoclassic economics remarks that economical facts are the result of rational decisions (see the Rational Choice Theory).

So, following such argument,

if you maintain a dog, you are probably contributing more and in a more healthy way to the economy, and therefore, to your society.

If, instead, you would give such money to that poor people, your money would be used to impose destructive social/economical/commercial/political habits. That is equivalent, for example, to what happens with migrants in rich countries: they go to rich countries and impose destructive social/economical/commercial/political habits, so rich countries derive into tendencies to poverty.

So, your decision to have a well-cared animal at home becomes not an isolated decision, but part of a whole set of habits that contribute to healthy social growth.

In addition, according to common "right-wing" (which are actually more socialists than what is currently called "socialism" or "left-wing"), according to common "right-wing" positions (which I mostly adhere to), what reduces poverty is just creating richness, promoting the existence of more rich people.

In synthesis, you should do your best effort to keep your dog in the absolute best health and environmental conditions, instead of giving that money to poor, who will use it to promote poverty.

Answer 22

Frankly, I found the question disgusting.

If a “friend” made this suggestion to me, he would suffer consequences. Just telling everyone “ex-friend suggested I should kill my dog and give the savings to charity” would make him unwelcome in most places.

I assume that is an answer to any question you may have had.

Answer 23

The golden rule can be a helpful guide in some cases. If you were homeless and someone asked "should I have my dog put down so that I can give you money" would you say "yes"? Naive interpretations of the Golden rule assume that everybody is out to maximise their own personal benefit, but I don't think that is actually the case. Almost all of us have a sense of ethics and altruism to some degree, which should be taken into account when applying the golden rule, we shouldn't assume the other party is lacking in those qualities (at least without good evidence!).