Why Words Matter in Animal Welfare Organisations

Language is never neutral. The words we choose carry assumptions, assign blame, and shape how communities engage — or disengage — with the organisations that are trying to help them. In animal welfare, this is not a trivial concern. The language used by shelters, rescues, and advocates directly influences whether people feel safe enough to come forward when they are struggling to care for their animals. And when people don't feel safe coming forward, animals suffer.

This post explores some of the most common ways that loaded

language in animal welfare creates unintended harm — and what we can say instead.

"Dumped" and "Abandoned": Who Does This Language Actually Hurt?

When an animal enters rescue pathways, it is common to describe them as having been "dumped" or "abandoned." These words carry strong moral weight — they imply intentional cruelty, a deliberate act of disregard. But the research tells a very different story about why most animals are relinquished.

A peer-reviewed study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science (Cobb et al., 2021) found that owner-related factors — including financial hardship, housing instability, and health issues — are among the most significant predictors of animal surrender. The same research found that people in more socioeconomically deprived and racially marginalised communities were disproportionately likely to surrender animals, not because they cared less, but because they had fewer resources and less access to support services.¹

Crucially, the language we use has real-world consequences. Shelter industry advocates have long recognised that shaming language around relinquishment causes people to delay or avoid approaching animal welfare organisations for help — which can lead to animals being left in deteriorating situations, or genuinely abandoned in the field rather than brought in safely.² When we call a surrender "dumping," we are not describing reality accurately, and we are actively discouraging the very behaviour — reaching out for help — that keeps animals safer.

Better language: "An animal needing a new home," "rehoming," or simply "surrendered" — without editorial commentary.

The Desexing Debate: Shame Is Not a Strategy

Another place where judgement creeps into animal welfare messaging is around desexing. The refrain of "how dare these people not desex their pets" is familiar in rescue circles, but it is both factually wrong and counterproductive.

Research published in HumanePro (the professional publication of Humane World for Animals) found that many people in underserved communities lack access to affordable desexing services — not the motivation.³ When mandatory desexing laws were introduced in some US jurisdictions without corresponding funding for low-income households, the result was not fewer undesexed animals: it was more shelter surrenders, as people gave up animals they feared they could no longer legally keep.³

Undesexed animals are largely undesexed due to cost and access barriers, not indifference. Approximately 23 million pets in the United States alone live in households below the poverty line, and very few of them are desexed.³ Blaming individuals for a systemic access failure does nothing to solve overpopulation — but it does drive away the communities we most need to reach.

"Kill-Listed": The Problem with Projecting Human Guilt onto Animals

The term "kill-listed" — used widely on social media to create urgency around animals at risk of euthanasia — deserves careful examination. There is a legitimate reason to communicate urgency, but the framing of an animal as being "on death row" or "kill-listed" applies a human criminal justice lens to animals who are simply running out of time in an overcrowded system.

The animal welfare sector has been actively grappling with the loaded nature of "kill" versus "no-kill" terminology for years. As the University of Florida's sheltering medicine program notes, moving beyond this binary language can "reveal a vast common ground for effective collaboration around shared goals."⁴ The terms distort public understanding, set shelters up against each other, and — in the case of "kill-listed" — can actually place moral blame on the intake that brought the animal in, rather than on the systemic underfunding of animal services.

The term also creates a particular kind of emotional pressure that can result in animals being rescued by underprepared individuals or rescue groups, not because it is the best outcome for the animal, but because of online panic. Language that communicates genuine urgency without assigning guilt or triggering crisis responses is both more accurate and more effective.

Domestic Violence and Pet Surrender: Why "DV" Matters More Than a Backstory

When an animal arrives in rescue because their owner is fleeing domestic violence, how we talk about that situation is not merely a stylistic choice — it is a safety issue.

Research consistently shows that pets are used as coercive control tools in abusive relationships. A survey published by The Hotline found that 48% of domestic violence survivors feared their abusive partner would harm or kill their pets, and 37% reported that the abuser had already made those threats.⁵ Research also shows that between 20% and 65% of survivors delay leaving a dangerous situation because they have nowhere safe to take their animals.⁶

This is why animal welfare organisations play a critically important role in domestic violence support — and why the language they use matters enormously. Using full, identifying descriptions of a person's circumstances in public posts about a surrendered animal ("this dog was given up because her owner was being beaten by her partner") can inadvertently expose a survivor. Abbreviated, neutral language — referencing "a DV situation" when necessary at all — protects the dignity and safety of vulnerable people.

It also avoids the trap of speculative storytelling (see below).

"Houseless" is Not the Same as "Homeless"

This distinction may seem minor, but it matters. "Homeless" implies that a person does not have — or perhaps has never had — a home, or that they are fundamentally without belonging. "Houseless" is increasingly used in welfare-informed contexts to describe people who currently lack stable housing, without defining them by that circumstance.

Research published in the Journal of Sociology (Irvine, 2013) explored the powerful human-animal bonds formed between people experiencing homelessness and their companion animals, finding that animals often provided a sense of purpose, identity, and safety for their owners.⁷ These are not people who have abandoned the concept of home or family — many are fighting hard to keep their animals precisely because they represent stability.

When animal welfare organisations describe animals as belonging to "a homeless person," they risk stigmatising both the animal and the person, and reinforcing narratives that make it less likely people in housing precarity will seek support.

The Danger of Speculative Backstories

There is a genuine and understandable instinct to give rescue animals a narrative. Stories help potential adopters connect emotionally with animals, and understanding a dog or cat's history can be genuinely useful for matching them with the right home.

But there is a significant difference between known history and invented history — and the line is frequently blurred in shelter and rescue communications, particularly on social media.

A 2022 study published in PMC (Lofthouse et al., 2022) examined newspaper coverage of animal relinquishment and abandonment, and found that episodic, individual-focused stories — rather than systemic coverage — dominated the media, often relying on emotional framing rather than factual grounding.⁸ The same dynamic plays out in rescue social media: an animal found alone on a road becomes "cruelly abandoned," a dog with a scar becomes "clearly abused," a cat who hisses "has obviously been mistreated."

These narratives feel compelling, but they are often speculation, and they carry real costs. They can:

• Misrepresent the animal's temperament or needs to potential adopters

• Wrongly assign blame to unknown previous owners

• Set unrealistic expectations about the animal's behaviour

• In cases involving DV or other sensitive circumstances, inadvertently expose private information

  
  

When you do not know an animal's history, say so plainly — and focus on what is true and observable: who the animal is now, how they behave, what they need. That is both more honest and more useful to the people trying to help them.

The Bigger Picture: Language, Trust, and the One Welfare Framework

All of these issues connect to a broader principle increasingly recognised in animal welfare research: the One Welfare framework, which recognises that human wellbeing, animal wellbeing, and environmental health are inseparable.¹ When animal welfare organisations stigmatise the people who rely on their services, they do not just damage human dignity — they damage animal outcomes.

A landmark study in Frontiers in Veterinary Science (Cobb et al., 2021) found that interventions supporting pet owners — affordable desexing, emergency boarding, surrender-prevention programmes — were among the most effective tools for reducing animal relinquishment.¹ These programmes only work if people feel safe enough to use them. Shame closes that door.

Animal welfare organisations exist to help animals. The most effective way to do that is to build communities of trust — with pet owners, with surrendering families, with people in crisis. The language we use is the first test of whether that trust is warranted.

Choose your words accordingly.

References

1. Cobb, M. L., Otto, C. M., & Fine, A. H. (2021). Exploring the Relationship Between Human Social Deprivation and Animal Surrender to Shelters in British Columbia, Canada. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 8, 656597. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.656597

2. Danyow, J. (quoted in Seven Days Vermont). Going Public About the Private Shame of Surrendering a Pet. Seven Days, May 2025. https://www.sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture/going-public-about-the-private-shame-of-surrendering-a-pet-33581637

3. Humane World for Animals / HumanePro. Shaking off Stigmas. https://humanepro.org/magazine/articles/shaking-stigmas

4. University of Florida. The Language of Lifesaving and Culture Change — Integrating Veterinary Medicine with Shelter Systems. https://ufl.pb.unizin.org/integratingveterinarymedicinewithsheltersystems/chapter/the-language-of-lifesaving-and-culture-change/

5. The Hotline. Plan for Safety: Domestic Violence and Pets. https://www.thehotline.org/resources/domestic-violence-and-pets/

6. Animal Welfare Institute. Animals and Interpersonal Violence. https://awionline.org/content/animals-and-interpersonal-violence

7. Irvine, L. (2013). Animals as Lifechangers and Lifesavers: Pets in the Redemption Narratives of Homeless People. Journal of Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241612456550

8. Lofthouse, R. et al. (2022). It's not fur: newspaper article reporting of abandonment and relinquishment of pets exhibit taxonomic biases in framing and language use. PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12308231/

9. Cobb, M. L. et al. (2021). Inequitable Flow of Animals in and Out of Shelters: Comparison of Community-Level Vulnerability for Owner-Surrendered and Subsequently Adopted Animals. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 8, 784389. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.784389

10. Johnson, S. & Stevenson, C. (2021). Helping People and Animals Together: Taking a Trauma-Informed, Culturally Safe Approach Towards Assisting Placed-at-Risk People with Addressing Animal Neglect. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353464229