“The main difference between a man and a dog is that if you do a good deed for a dog, he will not turn around and bite you.”— Mark Twain

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A friend of mine named Fred told me last weekend that a long-time client of his recently died. After attending the client’s funeral, Fred went back to the widow’s house for a reception, where he saw a large statue of a dog in the living room. When Fred, a serious animal lover, did not see any pets in the house, he asked if the dog statue had any particular meaning for the dearly departed gentleman.

The grieving widow explained, “Well, my husband always wanted a dog in the house, and I always told him that there was no way I would be living in a house with a dog in it. They shed, and they make noise and ruin carpets, and I find them unpleasant, but since my husband kept after me to get a dog, I finally compromised. The compromise was that I allowed him to bring into the house a statue of a dog.”

Now, I am pretty sure that Gloria S. Feldscher would have loved that (true) story, and I would have told it to her, but Gloria died on June 18 at the age of 77 at Taylor Hospice in southern Delaware County after a two-year struggle with primary lateral sclerosis, a progressive disease of the nervous system.

I doubt that there is an editor at any newspaper in the Delaware Valley who did know the name Gloria S. Feldscher. The Oxford Circle native who graduated from Olney High School in 1951 was possibly the most prolific letter-to-the-editor writer in the Delaware Valley.

I’ve worked for quite a few Philadelphia-area newspapers in my time, and I’m pretty sure they all received letters from her on a fairly regular basis. Almost all of her letters were about animal rights, animal abuse, animal exploitation, etc. The only exceptions were occasional letters about Israel-related issues. I have also shared an email relationship with her for years. We’d send each other jokes, essays on animal issues, spectacular animal photos, etc. She often said she much-preferred animals to people, and her passion for animals was clearly palpable.

Bridget Irons, Chestnut Hill’s best-known animal activist, told us Monday, “I visited Gloria at Taylor Hospice 12 hours before she died. I greeted her with the pet name ‘Earth Angel,’ one she gave herself. She affectionately called me ‘Bright-eyed Bambi,’ after I got my first pair of prescription eyeglasses, so I used these names at the time of my visit, thinking perhaps there would be a reaction. There was none. At the same time she may have been able to hear me. I’ll never know. She truly was an angel. The animals have lost a dear friend, one whose tireless efforts on behalf of suffering animals everywhere have been most remarkable. I will miss her tremendously.”

Gloria did not have any formal education beyond high school, but she definitely educated herself on virtually every issue related to animals with her exhaustive reading and research. For example, in the June 16, 2006, issue of the Philadelphia City Paper, Gloria wrote about the local restaurants that serve fois gras (duck or goose liver): “Plaudits to Councilman Jack Kelly for introducing a bill that would ban the sale of a food born of the suffering of ducks and geese, foie gras. Joel Assouline’s referring to Kelly as a crazy person with a stupid idea lends credence to a statement by Albert Einstein: ‘Great spirits have always been criticized by mediocre minds.’

“The hapless winged beings have four pounds of grains pumped into them several times a day, which causes hepatic steatosis, the liver’s enlarging to 10 times the normal size. This cruelly produced liver gets 85 percent of its calories from fat. A two-ounce serving of this product of pain contains 25 grams of fat and 85 milligrams of cholesterol. Moreover, as the ruined goose/duck liver slithers through the digestive track of the morally truncated gourmands, it oils the arteries with a coating that makes it easier for cardiovascular disease to slide in to attack the body. Like the plantation owners who survived the abolition of slavery and the factories that survived child labor laws, the pimps of pain who pander mega livers would survive the abolition of this ‘delicacy of despair.’”

As an animal nut myself, I usually agreed with Gloria about hunting, furs, animal testing, the cruelty to animals in the food production industry, puppy mills, etc., but one time I did part company with her was on the issue of feeding meat to dogs. Gloria fed her dogs a vegetarian diet.

“It’s one thing for human beings to eat a vegetarian diet,” I told her. “We can make those choices, but a dog cannot. And human beings are omnivores, so we can definitely survive and thrive by not eating meat, but dogs are carnivores. Their biochemistry and metabolism are different from ours. They’re not too crazy about vegetables and fruits, and I’m not sure they can remain healthy and live a long life without eating meat.” Gloria strongly disagreed, said there was solid research to back her claim and insisted that her dogs did fine as vegetarians.

Gloria was also called for comments on animal-related issues by some newspapers. In the September 18, 2006, issue of the Norristown Times-Herald, Feldscher was asked about upcoming deer kills in Norristown Farm Park and Lorimer Park in Abington, the latter with bows and arrows.

“Once you pierce a park with hunting,” she said, “it just goes on. It’s opening this bloody floodgate, and that’s it … To me, the bow-and-arrow killing is even worse than the shotgun because it’s very hard to get a quick kill, as they call it. It’s the cruelest way to kill deer … When the hunters are going in, we’re shouting at them, but that’s all we can do.”

And Gloria definitely was not one to mince words. When People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) president Ingrid Newkirk received a ton of flack in the media after she blasted movie director Michael Moore for comments he made in praise of hunting, Gloria sent the following comment on July 5, 2007, to The PETA files blog: “So Michael Moore glorifies meat eating and hunting, and finds that the animal rights ‘shit’ makes him want to kick his dog. Well, I say that the man deserves to be publicly castrated.”

Richard McIlhenny, a Mt. Airy resident and ReMax Services agent who has helped rescue injured animals (his efforts have been the subject of articles in the Local), said Sunday, “I admired Gloria for her tireless effort to campaign in defense of animals. She and I became friends when I rescued a baby fawn from the bridle path of the Wissahickon, and Gloria came to my welcome home party for our dog, Matty, after she went missing for a month and was then found.”

Gloria married Ed Cohen in 1955. The couple moved to Plymouth Meeting in 1973 and got divorced in 1993. They had one son, Gilbert. Gloria was a long-time secretary for International Marketing Service, from which she retired in 1999.

She was cremated at a private service. Contributions may be made on her behalf to PETA, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510.