R. Dale Hylton: The Utility Player of Animal Protection

R. Dale Hylton (1930- )
Years at HSUS: 1964-1998
Major Accomplishments: Conducted animal dealer investigations in the 1960s; supervised construction and co-managed The HSUS's Waterford, Virginia animal shelter and educational facility; launched HSUS humane education programs; worked in anti-rodeo campaigns; helped to organize local societies and operate The HSUS shelter accreditation program.

By Bernard Unti

These days, someone looking to The HSUS for help with investigations, shelters or humane education would have to speak with at least three staff members, and probably more.

In 1964, it would have been possible to speak with just one man—Dale Hylton. In an era of limited resources, Hylton embodied the versatility that a streamlined organization required: During his years at The HSUS, he served as an investigator, construction supervisor and shelter manager, animal sheltering specialist, and humane educator.

Hylton came to The HSUS as a result of his friendship with legendary investigator Frank McMahon. In fact, he interviewed for a job just a few days after the death of HSUS co-founder Fred Myers in late 1963, but the organization was too cash-strapped to hire him. In early 1964, Hylton was able to quit his job as an electrical lighting salesman to join the staff only after an HSUS member pledged the funds necessary to cover an investigator's salary for one year, as part of the campaign to document the theft of dogs and cats by laboratory animal dealers.

The Investigator

Hylton's investigative work focused on Pennsylvania's largest weekly auction, a major hub of the laboratory animal trade. He quickly discovered that the real action took place in the parking lot, where truck drivers met to arrange clandestine exchanges of dogs and cats, deals later consummated on lonely country roads a few miles away from the auction site.

Posing as an animal buyer for a hospital's experimental program, Hylton accumulated evidence of a network of dealers, which he sketched out on a large map at The HSUS office. His inquiries helped to establish that major dealers preferred "to trade truckloads of dogs with dealers across state lines with the primary purpose of frustrating any owner's attempt to trace any owned pet that had disappeared."

The HSUS presented this evidence to the Pennsylvania legislature, which in turn adopted in late 1965 an improved state dog law, requiring that every dealer acquire a kennel license to sell dogs. This law anticipated some provisions of the federal Laboratory Animal Welfare Act (AWA) just one year later. In fact, some of Hylton's reports were introduced as evidence of the need for federal legislation at the 1966 hearings that led to the AWA's enactment.

Hylton's investigative career prematurely came to an end in Pennsylvania in the fall of 1966, just a few weeks after the AWA passed. A suspicious dog dealer—convicted of cruelty to animals just one year earlier on evidence presented by The HSUS—filed charges against Hylton under an obscure 1894 statute originally intended to prevent strike-breakers and Pinkerton agents from misrepresenting their identities. The offense carried a maximum penalty of $1,000 and one year in jail.

Although The HSUS was prepared to defend him, Hylton plead guilty to save costs. He did so in a country courthouse packed with dog dealers, some of whom made little effort to conceal the firearms they were carrying. After The HSUS agreed to pay Hylton's fine of $250 (and $160 in court costs), the judge quickly ordered him and his supporting witnesses into private chambers, where he showed them an outside exit and told them to leave town immediately.

With his effectiveness as an undercover investigator compromised in Pennsylvania, Hylton was reassigned to work on investigations and outreach centering on rodeo cruelty and the reform of municipal pounds and animal shelters. He participated in a number of local and state-level campaigns to prove that rodeos were cruel and could not be staged without injury to the animals.

In West Virginia, he signed a complaint against one participant who broke a calf's leg during a roping contest. "Cowboys seem to be very brave when it comes to jerking an animal around on the end of a rope, but not when it comes to facing a magistrate," Hylton told the local press when the rodeo man left town to avoid facing charges.

As part of The HSUS's longstanding commitment to help launch and build up societies around the country through its Department of Field Services, Hylton also traveled widely, giving advice, assistance, and working to improve conditions in local animal care and control agencies and organizations. For a short time, he even served as interim director of The HSUS's New Jersey branch. By early 1967, however, an important new initiative prompted another shift in Hylton's responsibilities.

The Builder

When Hylton joined the staff in 1964, HSUS President Oliver Evans was already working to realize Fred Myers' dream of an education center and model animal shelter at Waterford, Virginia, on 140 acres purchased by supporter Edith Goode. The HSUS conceived of the Waterford project as an education center, to which animal care and control personnel from all over the country would come to learn the best methods and techniques. The National Humane Education Center (NHEC) was also to be the headquarters for The HSUS's humane education work.

Ground breaking ceremonies for the NHEC took place in late December 1966, and Evans tasked Hylton, who could read blueprints and had some training in mechanical drawing, with general oversight. After his appointment as NHEC program director in early 1967, Hylton supervised virtually all aspects of construction at Waterford.

Well before the NHEC opened, The HSUS was already deeply committed to the search for optimal methods of euthanasia. Hylton served on a special committee with HSUS board members and the Washington Animal Rescue League's Phyllis Wright to investigate the humaneness of all available techniques and systems for putting animals to sleep.

"We were in complete agreement," Hylton recalls, "that any euthanasia method advocated should not only be a procedure that offered the least traumatic experience to each individual animal, but that it should also be acceptable to the operator and/or observer. Experience had already established that euthanasia was the leading cause of employee burnout."

Once the shelter was built, Hylton and Wright worked together to make intracardiac injection of sodium pentobarbital the standard method of euthanasia at Waterford. But because the purpose of the NHEC was to train and educate humane society personnel in available techniques, they decided to include standard euthanasia equipment as well.

By this time, HSUS officials had concluded that the Electrothanator (an electrical euthanasia machine that had initially inspired interest on the part of Myers and others) "could not, in good conscience, be recommended under any circumstances." The HSUS did install a Euthanaire high-altitude chamber at Waterford, but Hylton says, "To my knowledge, it was always shown to students, the concept of its operation presented, but never used for demonstration of an actual euthanasia." More commonly known as the decompression chamber, the Euthanaire would be a controversial subject within animal protection by 1972.

Hylton and an acquaintance also built a carbon monoxide euthanasia unit at Waterford, but, like the Euthanaire, this unit was never actually employed. The two men built it on their own, strictly to show visiting humane society personnel that, if necessary, "such a unit could be developed by local talent anywhere in the country."

Wright had trained Hylton in basic animal shelter work when he started at The HSUS, and the two were close. When The HSUS agreed to assume the animal control contract for Loudoun County, Virginia, where the NHEC was located, the two friends had to confront the challenges that any local society would face. They did so with determination and insight.

The Waterford shelter was, Hylton believes, the first in the United States to require neutering of male dogs scheduled for adoption, a practice that took longer to establish than the spaying of female cats and dogs and the neutering of male cats. They also established a spay/neuter clinic. Staff members visited veterinarians and recruited them to perform sterilization surgeries at significantly reduced rates. Now commonplace, these actions were significant innovations in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Educator

The original plan for Waterford had included the administration of a five-state pilot project to test the value of The Kindness Club, a children's humane education program founded by Canadian Aida Flemming. Hylton wanted to take on the development of such a program, and received permission to explore incorporation of The Kindness Club into the work of The HSUS. No funding was allocated to the project, however, and Hylton had to make it work without any dedicated income stream.

With the help of educators Jean McClure Kelty (author of If You Have a Duck, which became a staple of The HSUS's early humane education offerings) and Hope Sawyer Buyukmihci, who permitted Hylton to reprint many of the leaflets she had already written for The Kindness Club and other programs, he was able to cobble together a project manual for humane education. In building support for The Kindness Club, Hylton drew heavily upon the network of contacts he had developed while working in field services.

Hylton believed that the success of the humane education program depended on the development of a monthly magazine, to ensure frequent and regular contact with young people. A few attempts at writing the first issue made it clear to him that "it was virtually impossible to write the same way" for a projected audience ranging in age from 6 to 16. It was a lot more work, but Hylton decided to produce three separate age-appropriate issues each month, writing "Your Kindness Club Letter" for ages 6-10, "Defenders" for ages 11-13, and "EcoloKIND" for ages 14-16.

"Most of the articles covered the same subject areas, but each was written for a specific age group," Hylton remembers. "I read widely and researched for fascinating stories about animals, particularly when they could convey a lesson of respect and consideration and concern."

Hylton still remembers the satisfaction he felt when (having forgotten something there) he doubled back to the Leesburg, Virginia Post Office to find that one magazine had not been processed yet. "A postal employee had commandeered it to read the articles!" Hylton beams. Another source of pride for Hylton is the fact that The Kindness Club produced at least one HSUS staff member of the current era, West Coast Regional Office Director Eric Sakach, whose mother Elizabeth, an active animal protectionist, encouraged her son to pursue a career in the field.

The Data Man

In the mid-1970s, The HSUS decided to sell the NHEC and end its involvement in Loudoun County animal care and control (the property has since become home to the county's animal care agency). With Waterford behind him, Hylton, now working from The HSUS's downtown Washington D.C. office, devoted himself to further humane education work and to helping Wright with a shelter accreditation program.

Serving on the Accreditation Committee along with Wright, Pat Parkes, Frantz Dantzler, and board member Anna Fesmire, Hylton reviewed all records from applicant humane societies interested in gaining formal endorsement of their animal welfare and control practices. He was in charge of evaluating their humane education programs, and sometimes served on the on-site inspection team.

After Wright proposed that The HSUS take its animal sheltering training program "on the road," Hylton joined her entourage, providing insights into humane education work to eager audiences all over the country.

In the years prior to his retirement in 1998, Hylton worked in The HSUS's Data and Administrative Services section. One of his projects there involved the microfilming of a substantial portion of The HSUS's early correspondence, an undertaking which guarantees that students of the organization's history will have a rich legacy of archival documents for future use.

Today, Hylton lives in Canby, Oregon, where he and his wife, Susan, are active in the affairs of their church. He remains enthusiastic about animal protection. In 2003, Hylton contributed a story to God's Messengers: What Animals Teach Us About the Divine, edited by Allen and Linda C. Anderson (New World Library, 2003). Hylton also has tremendous pride concerning The HSUS, and many fond memories of McMahon, Wright, and the rest of "the dedicated people on staff when I was there."

Bernard Unti received his doctorate in U.S. history in 2002 from American University. His book, Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of The Humane Society of the United States, is available from Humane Society Press.