Public policy regarding dogs in urban environments has served to replicate the plethora of social inequalities at play as these areas expanded rapidly in the midst of and following the Industrial Revolution in the United States. These policies were often focused on the public health threats surrounding large populations of stray dogs- and the fears of parents for their children in these environments. According to Wang, “the evolving field of animal studies has tended to concentrate on the cultural construction of animality and its implications for human forms of identity and exclusion, but animals’ presence in human society has helped shape the full range of human experiences, including matters of regulation and state power” (999). In the article Animals and the Law: Property, Cruelty, Rights, Jerrold Tannenbaum also argues that animals play a fundamental role in the law, but that the law today is generally fair: “the basic conceptual apparatus American law has fashioned to deal with animals is sensible and serviceable. The law’s view of animals is not hopelessly manipulative and heartless. Indeed, fundamental legal concepts relating to animals provide considerable moral space” (540). This was not always the case, and it took a lot of effort to win these rights for animals.

In New York City, more and more regulations were enforced in order to better control dogs- both strays and family pets. A highly controversial ordinance was passed in 1908 that permitted police to shoot any unmuzzled, unleashed dog on sight. This resulted in the killings of several cherished family pets: “Billy II was wearing a license tag, but no muzzle, when he was shot and killed by someone [who was]  identified as a plainclothes policeman… in a culture where sentimentality toward pets as beloved family members had become well established in middle-class homes by the mid-nineteenth century and had only grown stronger and more widespread with each passing decade, the… dog killings sparked a public relations debacle” (1015). Not unlike injustices towards wealthy people, the execution of pure-bred dogs owned by wealthy families ignited much more of an uproar than the killings of dogs belonging to poor families, or to no one at all. Policies like this directly contrasted the animal and children’s rights movement that was simultaneously occurring. According to Susan J. Pearson, “in 1877, the American Humane Society was formed as the national organization for animal and child protection. Thirty years later, there were 354 anticruelty organizations chartered in the United States, nearly 200 of which were similarly invested in the welfare of both humans and animals…Unlike many of today’s humane organizations, [these] were delegated police powers to make arrests and bring cases of cruelty to animals and children before local magistrates”. William J. Shultz makes a similar argument in The Humane Movement in the United States: 1910-1922: “in the minds of its founders, the New York society was to be an organization for the enforcement of the law. It did not concern itself with the causes which ‘lead to tragedy in the child’s life, except as might be incidental to the in­dividual case presented. The Society was primarily con­cerned with the rescue of the children suffering from brutal treatment or living in degraded surroundings, and it presented such evidence to the court that those responsible for these conditions might feel the heavy hand of the law” (200). Forces such as the ASPCA clashed with the Department of Health, eventually claiming several victories and putting an effective end to some of the more vicious anti-dog laws that had emerged.

Societal fears, particularly in urban environments, resulted in many cruel, public safety-driven policies that attempted to control and eradicate both dogs and children that were considered “stray” or neglected and therefore inferior. Scholarly research indicates that although these polices were enforced to varying degrees in urban environments across the country, anti-cruelty organizations such as the Humane Society and the ASPCA fought back, resulting in the far better treatment of both disenfranchised urban children and dogs by 1950. The anti-cruelty movement was one of the most rapid periods of progress for the bettering of the lives of both children and animals. Although it was often a harsh, impersonal movement, it lead to real change, and the creation of many social organizations for the wellbeing of children and animals that are invaluable today.