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Barbara Kay: Sacrificing a CEO on a doggie-love altar

Video from a downtown Vancouver building shows Centerplate Inc. CEO Desmond Hague kicking and abusing a dog.

Dog behaviourist Ray Coppinger, a revered pioneer in the field of canine cognition, and a rugged outdoorsman whose dogs worked for their keep, has no use for wussy urbanites who treat dogs as furry honorary humans. He once told a journalist that he had a bumper sticker (which his wife would not allow him to put on his car) reading, “What is this country coming to if a man can’t shoot his own dog?”

He didn’t mean that people have the right to abuse their dogs, only that dogs are not the moral equals of human beings, and they are also the property of human beings. Those are fighting words today. The trend in human-canine politics — and there are few political arenas more ferociously embattled than this one — is toward “honorary personhood” (to quote author John Homans).

So whether you shoot your dog (for which you may actually have good reasons) or simply kick it and yank it off the floor with its leash (there is never a good reason, apart from saving someone from an attack), if you do it publicly, you had better be prepared for what might be an even more vicious smackdown than you’d ever get for, say, spanking your child in public.

Des Hague, CEO of Centreplate, a U.S. catering company that runs the food concession at. B.C. Place and similar sports facilities in the United States, found that out the hard way. A video security camera captured Hague in a Vancouver hotel elevator, apparently kicking a small dog and then pulling it off the floor by its leash. Since no animal or human was at risk from the dog at the time, there can be no condonable reason for the alleged abuse.

Hague’s behaviour is indefensible, but so is what happened next.

When the video was released, Hague immediately was placed on indefinite probation by Centreplate’s board, with the warning that termination would follow a second such incident. That in itself is arguably a disproportionately severe punishment, and should have sufficed.

But then, as public hostility mounted with wide distribution of the video, Centreplate panicked. In our era, a person (or a company) is judged by one’s capacity to feel the pain of the “underdog.” Retaining Hague under the circumstances was simply politically incorrect. The board of directors decided it was more important to check their human privilege than to stand by their man. So they threw Hague completely under the bus.

Hague has resigned “as a result of [his] personal misconduct involving the mistreatment of an animal in his care,” according to a Tuesday statement by Centreplate. Leaving no doubt that the decision was a reaction to mob anger rather than a consequence of a breach of company policy, the chairman of Centreplate’s board of directors announced, “I’d like to apologize for the distress that this situation has caused to so many; but also thank our employees, clients and guests who expressed their feelings about this incident. Their voices helped us to frame our deliberations during this very unusual and unfortunate set of circumstances.”

Unusual and unfortunate the incident may have been, but it was not deserving of such an extreme response. There are gradations of animal abuse. Hague may be intemperate and insensitive. He may even have something of the bully in him. But he’s no Michael Vick, for heaven’s sake. He didn’t torture the dog or set it on fire or take a whip to it. What happened wasn’t pretty, but neither was Centreplate’s reflexive tendency to appeasement, or its abandonment of proportion, not to mention loyalty.

Hague’s behaviour is indefensible, but so is what happened next.

In a further sanctimonious bid for the moral high ground, the board ordered Hague to donate $100,000 to set up a foundation “to help support the protection and safety of animals in the city of Vancouver where the incident occurred.” What a generous use of Hague’s money!

Press reports indicate that “it remains unclear if Hague, [having been fired], will still be donating the money.” I would suggest to Mr. Hague that scapegoatism has its limits, and he should tuck the money away for the rainy days ahead seeking new employment. If the hearts of Centreplate’s board of directors are (suddenly!) so tenderly affected by the plight of abused dogs that they wish to express their compassion in tangible form, let them pony up $100K of their own damn money, which, by the way, should not go to a new organization, completely unnecessary, but should go to one of the many Vancouver shelters already in the business of animal welfare.

If they really loved dogs so much, they’d have known that.