Hylton, R. Dale

▪ American animal rights activist

in full  Robert Dale Hylton 

born May 20, 1930, Strathmore, Calif., U.S.

died Feb. 1, 2008, Decatur, Ill.

       animal rights activist and educator in the humane treatment of animals who served for more than three decades as adviser, consultant, and investigator for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

      During World War II, Hylton's parents divorced and his mother remarried. Hylton moved with his mother and stepfather to San Bernardino, Calif., where the family coped with nationwide food rationing by growing vegetables, canning fruit from local groves, and raising animals, including milk cows and chickens. Hylton was affectionate toward animals from an early age, even adopting a bull calf as a personal pet.

      After graduating from San Bernardino High School, Hylton attended a Bible college in La Verne, Calif. He worked as a ticket seller for the Greyhound Corporation before being drafted into the 2nd Army Medical Corps, where he completed training to become a surgical nurse at the Presidio military installation in San Francisco. He was soon assigned to a mobile surgical evacuation unit but was never deployed overseas.

      In 1964 Hylton was hired as an investigator by the HSUS in Washington, D.C., joining the organization's ongoing effort to bring the laboratory-animal trade under federal regulation. By posing as an animal dealer in Pennsylvania, Hylton was able to document the unofficial and clandestine auction of dogs and cats, a widespread practice designed to prevent owners from tracing the whereabouts of missing pets. On the basis of evidence submitted by the HSUS, the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1965 adopted a law that required dealers to obtain a kennel license in order to sell dogs. Hylton's reports were later presented as evidence in congressional hearings on the federal Animal Welfare Act of 1966. Signed into law in August of that year, the act remains the only federal statute regulating animal treatment in the areas of research, transport, exhibition, and commerce.

 In September 1966 Hylton pleaded guilty to charges brought against him by a disgruntled dog dealer, who had invoked a 19th-century statute designed to prevent identity misrepresentation by strikebreakers and Pinkerton (Pinkerton, Allan) agents (private personal security and detective agents deployed by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency). Reassigned to other investigation and outreach activities, Hylton played a prominent role in local and state campaigns designed to demonstrate the inherent cruelty of rodeos (rodeo). He also acted as field representative and consultant in the HSUS's nationwide effort to reform animal shelters, municipal pounds, and other animal-control agencies and organizations.

      After briefly serving as interim director of the New Jersey branch of the HSUS, Hylton was appointed in 1967 as program director of the National Humane Education Center (NHEC), the HSUS's new humane-education headquarters and model animal shelter in Waterford, Va. His activities included investigating and leading instruction in humane methods of animal euthanasia at Waterford. He also conceived and produced monthly publications for the Kindness Club, a humane-education program for children ages 6 to 16.

      When the HSUS decided to sell the NHEC in the mid-1970s, Hylton moved to the HSUS's Washington office, where he continued his work in humane education and assisted in the development of a shelter-accreditation program. As a member of the HSUS's Accreditation Committee, Hylton participated in on-site inspections and evaluated the animal-control practices and humane-education programs of animal shelters seeking the formal endorsement of the HSUS. Prior to his retirement in 1998, Hylton also worked on a project to convert to microfilm the early correspondence and other documents of the HSUS for use by future historians of the organization. In 2003 Hylton contributed a story to the book God's Messengers: What Animals Teach Us About the Divine, edited by Allen and Linda Anderson.

Additional Reading

Bernard Oreste Unti, Protecting All Animals: A Fifty-Year History of the Humane Society of the United States (2004); The Humane Society of the United States, Making a Difference for Animals: A Look at the Humane Society of the United States and the Reasons for Its Existence (1996); United States Congress, Senate Committee on Commerce, Animal Dealer Regulation: Hearings Before the Committee on Commerce, United States Senate, Eighty-Ninth Congress, Second Session, on S. 2322, a Bill to Authorize the Secretary of Agriculture to Regulate the Transportation, Sale, and Handling of Dogs and Cats (1966).Jeannette Nolen

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