PETA President Tracy Reiman Tackles Your Tough Questions and Tricky Situations

My dog loves her crate! PETA should stop shaming dog guardians for using them.

That’s Molly, one of the many dogs you can see online finding creative ways to escape their prisons – or desperately trying to, contorting themselves, digging, bending, or even overturning the crate – while their humans are away. Maybe your dog is more passive, but NO dog “loves” her little metal box. If she runs back to her jail cell, it’s a sign of conditioning, not “Yippee! I’m getting locked up again.” And if there’s a fire, a flash flood, or a burglary, that’s that, isn’t it, if she isn’t able to “Molly” out.

Crates are craftily sold to “speed up housetraining,” but in real life, puppies can’t “hold it.” You have to painstakingly train them by taking them outside a lot and praising them when they relieve themselves out there. Read Dogs Hate Crates by trainers Ray and Emma Lincoln – and order extra copies for anyone else who has turned their home into a dog detention center.

Take your dog with you if possible, or leave her loose at home with toys galore. Come home on your lunch break, or use a trusted dog walker or daycare. Your dog is a person, not something to be stored away for convenience.

I’ve cut back on meat. Shouldn’t I be praised rather than slammed for not going all the way?

Let’s say you were the judge at Jeffrey Dahmer’s trial and he told you that he had “cut back” on eating human flesh. Would you say, “Good on you, Jeff. Off you go then”? Bet you wouldn’t! And don’t say that’s different, because each animal who is killed for meat dies as badly as Dahmer’s victims did. “But, cheese!” you whine. Really, grown person? And, “What about protein?” Oh, please, Big Boy! Try this: When “I can never resist bacon!” pops into your head, swap it for “I can never resist being cruel to animals.” See what I mean?

Here’s the good news: You can’t walk into a supermarket these days without tripping over superior swaps, from protein-packed vegan chicken and pepperoni sticks to fooled-you cashew cheeses. Beans, lentils, tofu, tempeh, and other protein superstars have been there all along – and unlike meat, they won’t land you in the ER with clogged arteries.

“Cutting back” on cruelty is cute, but not cute enough – so cut it out entirely and don’t look back.