When you are dealing with the animal rights people vs. the animal welfare people, you have to separate the rhetoric they use to elicit an emotional response that is strong enough to separate you from your money from the agenda which they have consistently stated through interview after interview for over two decades. To get a clear grasp of this, you have to shut off your emotional response and look at their policies in the cold light of reason and logic.

First--they believe animals have "rights.".  A right is something that you exercise and which entails responsibilities.  You have the right to vote, the right to free speech, etc.  These rights are something you have because you have chosen a democratic form of government.  You protect them by keeping other countries from imposing their views by force which means maintaining and serving in a military; you protect them by making sure that no one's rights are abridged, by maintaining a social structure that ensures this.  The existence of our rights and our protection of them means that we
can have a "majority of one." 

Rights are really not part of natural law, they are an artifact of civilization, of an organized social structure that gives something to its participants that they can exercise even when it is not productive for the group as a whole.  Can you see a group of dogs sitting around deciding whether Joe, whom everyone detests and who is a little to slow to pull his fair share of the hunt, should be able to get an equal portion of food?  How about Ted who was the best hunter of all and fed more than his share who is now too old to keep up?  Do they give him a pension of extra food to keep him alive?  How about Dolly who has had a litter every year.  Does she get to say no, I'm sick of taking care of puppies and want to sit out a year? 

Second--if you accept that animals have rights, then there are certain logical conclusions that derive from this belief.  One is that they cannot be owned by another species.  If a dog is the same as a cat is the same as a boy, and you cannot own a boy then you cannot own a dog or a cat.  So seeing-eye dogs, search-and-rescue dogs, in fact, all dogs are being held in slavery in the eyes of the animal rights people. We are using these animals for our own ends and that is not right. 

The most egregious aspect of this is the breeding of dogs, which involves humans making decisions for them about reproduction.  They are dedicated to having this stop.  These are not stupid people and they are capable of bringing unemotional logic to their strategy sessions.  No one would consider stopping the ownership of pets or their production for ALL.  Instead, they are chiseling away at segments and they began with countries with central governments where one decision is all they need.  So in England, you cannot own a Tosa or an American Pit Bull, etc.  They cannot be bred.  After all, this is only reasonable since these are dangerous dogs and pose a risk to society. 

In the US, this has been a much harder fight, but they are still at it, fighting city by city.  Once you accept that breed "X" is dangerous, and has to be eliminated, then it's easier to keep extending this to breed "Y" and breed "Z".  First, you go after the purebred dogs because they are the most identifiable.  So they have slandered and libeled us and our dogs until a vast majority of the people and even some veterinarians think that we are terrible villains and that mutts are vastly superior to purebred dogs as pets.

Second--once you accept that, then you have to accept that we shouldn't be allowed to breed dogs. People who want a pet can adopt one from a shelter which is where unwanted ones end up. Since all these are sterilized, eventually, there would be no more dogs or cats except those in the "wild."
Right?

Third--to accomplish these ends, they have to have financial support and it comes from people who are actually concerned with the welfare of animals.  So ask yourself, where does this financial support go?  That is an interesting aspect of the whole movement, especially of it's biggest single organization PETA.

If you can get people to understand that the premise is wrong, then their house of cards does fall apart.  Animals don't have rights.  Human beings are custodians of this world and what is on it because we have the greater abilities and we alone have the ability to destroy it.  WE HAVE RESPONSIBILITIES.  Humans have the obligation to take care of the animals on this planet and if we hadn't been doing such a pitiful job of it, these zealots wouldn't have been able to get anywhere nearly as far as they have. 

That we have obligations to animals is the entire premise of the animal welfare movement which does deserve our wholehearted support.  If we'd been busier listening to these people and helping them, they wouldn't have been so easily hijacked by the lunatic fringe. 

When I requested permission to use this article I was given permission to use without using the author's name.