Little People?

I wanted to talk about this last week after we watched the movie, but before I could write the quote down, I forgot it. Thanks to someone in class the other day (sorry that I can't remember who), I remembered it. There was a quote in the movie about treating pets like little humans, and I thought of something interesting. It is true that there are many people out there who dress up their pets in one way or another because it looks "cute", and I've even seen videos of something as ridiculous as a dog wedding. Yet I think there are legitimate reasons for dressing pets up as well.

I've seen many animal shows, a lot of them about dogs and how to take care of them. In some cases, there are real reasons to put clothes on dogs and to take care of them in the same way as humans. With dogs like Chihuahuas and the Chinese Crested, a sweater can be essential in the winter so that they do not freeze. I even remember that my mom wanted to get a sweater or a blanket for our dog to have in the winter when he got older. Also with the Chinese Crested, since their bodies have mostly no hair, it is a requirement to put on sunscreen in the summer and to even use acne products on them. They can get acne just like we can. (You can look this up on the Animal Planet website. Just look at the Chinese Crested clip for Dogs 101.)

For Huskies and Malamutes that are on sled dog teams, booties are another essential. They give the dogs more traction and also help to protect the pads. (Of course, I don't advocate using dogs for sledding unless it's something the dog enjoys.) At the same time though, I've also seen countless clips where dogs are wearing booties and walking around funny because they aren't used to them. I feel bad for these dogs because they look so miserable while the person holding the camera just stands there filming or is laughing.

Now I have to ask, can you think of other reasons that a person would dress up their pet?

No Touch Monkey!

Okay, so many of you are probabaly wondering about the title of this post. It's the name of the book I just read, by Ayun Halliday. The full name of the book is No Touch Monkey!: And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late. The entire book is her memoirs of different travels, and in the essay titled On Dress, Ayun recalls a trip her and her husband made across the desert on camelback in India. If a camel misbehaved in any way, the handler would hit and beat the camel in the face. There was one quote in particular that really stuck out at me, though. Halliday wrote:

"I couldn't bring myself to look her in the face, partly because I'd heard that camels' foul-smelling sputum could blind you if they spat in your eye, but also due to the cruelty of that wooden plug staked through her nostrils. The urban primitive movement was just gathering steam, and as a subway-riding city dweller, I'd seen my fair share of septum piercings and oversized jewelry whose purpose was to stretch. Still, I couldn't help noting that those were modifications humans had inflicted upon themselves by choice. I reckoned that if I were an animal and some two-legs drove a chunk of wood through my nose, I'd feel pretty f***ing stoned to get payback. I wouldn't hesitate to buck any brightly turbaned turkey making a show of steering me by yanking on a nylon cord," (Halliday 209).

My question this time is an easy one. What is your opinion on this quote?

Bryan's Question

In his latest post, Bryan asked the question, "If you were start to fix the pet industry, where would you start?"

Bryan brings up points like putting animals in good homes and fixing problems with breeding, and to me these are the places to start. One thing that can be done to start is to find and eliminate any illegal puppy mills, where animals are bred in the masses and disease runs rampant. In these conditions, animals are kept in cramped and dirty quarters, with little to no fresh food and water, and there are too many animals. Finding these and getting rid of them would be a positive step in the beginning.

As for fixing breeding problems, there are simple steps that can be taken. Spaying and neutering animals ensure that they do not create unwanted or uncared for pets. Yes, I know this can cause pain in an animal, but overall spaying and neutering can extend an animal's lifetime. Also, education about this is essential. I remember watching a show on Animal Planet called Pit Boss, all about an organization run by Shorty Rossi. He runs a talent agency and a Pit Bull rescue all in one. In one episode, he was called into a neighborhood by a fourteen-year-old boy who was concerned because an un-neutered male would escape from his yard and wander around the neighborhood. This dog had impregnated many dogs, including the dog the boy owned. Not to mention that the male was also the female's daughter. In this case, Shorty and his employees went into the neighborhood to talk to the owner. They informed him about the problems of not neutering his dog and told him about a clinic where the dog would be neutered for free. They also went around the neighborhood and talked to the people who lived there about the same points. The people were all open and recipient about what the group was talking about. In the end, the owner did agree to have his dog neutered. The reason he hadn't before was because he saw it as a sign of masculinity and toughness for his dog. (Of course, I may not be remembering that bit entirely accurately, so if anyone else has seen this, please let me know.)

Overall, I think these are good places to start, and education about these and other issues is especially important. The more people know and learn, the more something will be done about it. So now my question is, do you think the reason others don't spay or neuter an animal is because they also see it as a symbol for something?

Consciousness versus Unconsciousness

In our readings, there has been a large debate over whether animals are conscious or not. Some have the view that they are conscious, conscious of what they want, conscious of their pain, yet others knock these arguments aside by saying that animals may have wants and feel pain, but they are not aware of this and so are not conscious. Bermond describes consciousness as "knowing that you know," yet I agree with the point brought up in class today that this sounds more like self-consciousness than consciousness in general.

In the essay we read, Lynch argues that humans and animals are conscious, yet their levels of consciousness may vary, and uses the examples of driving and having a headache to describe his views. Through this, Lynch conveys his beliefs that there are varying levels of consciousness. Yet at the end of Lynch's argument, there is another two pages written by Jane Duran, agreeing with his statements and yet pointing out what she sees as flaws in his argument. According to Duran, the only degrees of consciousness are being awake (being conscious) or being asleep (being unconscious).

Reading that really struck a chord in me. I understood where she was coming from and, to me, it makes a lot of sense. I understand what everyone else is saying when they use the terms "conscious" and "unconscious", yet there are so many different ways to use a word. As we have seen in class, sometimes we have to be careful with the ways in which we use words in our arguments.

Having said all of that, I am curious. How would you define consciousness and unconsciousness? How would you define the terms in the case of animal ethics?

A Response to Laura

Laura asked the question, "Do you think that people that are unable to speak don't have rights?"

The answer is that they do. People who cannot speak still have rights because of the fact that they are humans. Humans have more rights (or more substantial rights) than animals, despite the attempts to change that. This means that humans who are sick, blind, deaf, dumb, senile, in a coma, or with any other affliction you could possibly imagine, have rights. Why? The answer simply is because they are human. Humans grant other humans rights, and any human is then protected by that umbrella. In fact, in some cases, having a certain affliction could possibly grant a human more rights if something is done to them. Has anyone ever noticed that a person with a disability who has been wronged is advocated for more and covered more in the news? (Or is this just my perception? Of course, this is not right or wrong. It is only an observation.) It is because they are unique in a way that most other humans are not.

The question is then, what about animals? Why can't animals have the same rights that we as humans do? What is causing the big debate over animal ethics and animal rights? I was going to go on from there, but I think that's a good question to leave everyone with.

The Death of an Animal

Frederike Kaldewaij believes that animals should not be killed because it does the animal harm; it is in the best interest for the animal to keep living. The animal can no longer enjoy life if it is killed, if life was ever enjoyable at all. Here I am referring to what Kaldewaij points at, animals raised for food. With the conditions most of these animals live in, life cannot be pleasant. Kaldewaij does not directly mention animals raised for their fur or leather, but the same must be said. The animals are killed, their lives cut short, all enjoyment gone.

But what about animals that are euthanized because they are suffering? Some animals are euthanaized simply because the animal shelters are too crowded, and that definitely goes back to Kaldewaij's arguments. But an animal who is sick? I wasn't there when one of our cats was put to sleep and I don't really remember what happened. All I remember there was my parents trying to tell me and me refusing to believe it, wanting to think she had just fallen asleep instead. I was there for the other one, but it was only later that I learned it was because a teeth cleaning operation had put her into a coma. What I do remember was crying in the backseat on the way home, convinced that life would never be the same again. (I was fairly young when both of these happened.) When our dog was put to sleep it was even worse. He had been a part of our family for twelve years and we had known him longer, since we adopted him from my aunt. He had been living with a congested heart condition (or some congestive condition) for about two years and it made him cough, but otherwise there seemed to be no change. The day before we put him to sleep he had collapsed but still got up and kept going. That and the fact that he had kept going for so long made me think he was a fighter, and sometimes I wonder if we did the right thing.

To sum it all up, here is my question. If an animal is suffering (no matter if they are a pet or not), is euthanizing them in their best interests, even when they are young, or is it cutting a life short?

Another Question

I'll admit that I think the last question I posed was terrible. I did not think on it enough, yet something yesterday and today helped me think of another one.

I'm sure that many are familiar with the Pokemon series, be it the game, the show, or both. In it we have the Pokemon (various animal-like creatures) that are pets, those that are shown in beauty competions, but the most well-known use is training them for battle. There are many good trainers that treat their Pokemon well, and there are other various factions throughout the series that treat their Pokemon poorly, sometimes working them to death or killing them for sport. Yet the overall theme of Pokemon is still training them to use them in battle, often times so much so until they are defeated by another Pokemon and faint. (They can be revived by using potions or by taking them to a Pokemon Center to be healed.)

So far, I have done nothing but sound like a total geek, but there is a point to this. With the popularity of the Pokemon series, especially for people of our age who probably remember when it first came out, my new question is this: Does this series and others like it help shape our ideas of how animals should be treated?