Is my dog happy? Rethinking responsibilities towards our pets
If we’re serious about shifting humanity’s place from master to equal among ecosystems, we can begin in our own backyard.
As veganism moves into the mainstream, conversations are turning towards the ethics of keeping pets. If we accept — as science continues to suggest — that animals are moral agents, individuals with personalities, then surely they have a right to autonomy and freedom.
Effective altruism is a school of thought that uses philosophical reasoning to determine actions that bring about the greatest positive impact. It sounds sensible enough, until you discover what happens when you take the idea to its logical conclusions. Case in point: Wild Animal Suffering Research, an organisation that, according to the linked post above, works towards “ways we can alleviate wild animal suffering, from euthanizing elderly elephants… to using more humane insecticides… to neutralizing predator species in order to relieve the suffering of prey.”
It’s an admirable goal, but can we really endeavour to eliminate suffering in the wild?
In his book Beyond Words: What Animals Think And Feel, Carl Safina notes that “Life depends on death.” Predators kill prey — but without predators, the prey population becomes uncontrolled and, faced with increased competition and a resulting lack of food, animals starve to death. In nature, there is always suffering.
The question I want to consider, however, is not whether coddled animals in cages suffer more or less than they would in the wild, but our right to decide their fate. As we begin to think of ourselves less as masters and more as cohabitants of a complex ecosystem, some difficult questions arise.
As Christine M. Korsgaard asks in a thoughtful essay for The Point, “keeping an animal for affection and companionship is also a way of using the animal.”
When it comes to dogs and cats, it’s fair to say we like to think of ourselves as cohabitants — we live side by side with these animals in a mutually beneficial relationship. I think that’s truest of cats, especially those who come and go freely.
But what’s the difference between a cat who lives her life confined to an apartment, and a hamster kept in a cage? We make the distinction, but anyone who’s watched a housecat stare obsessively through a window understands the nature of the relationship between that pet and its owner.
With dogs, the issue gets yet more complicated. Scientists are still grappling with exactly what happened in the history of dog domestication. But what we know for sure is that the process started tens of thousands of years ago, and dogs today have evolved to be dependent on humans. For better or worse, we’re stuck with each other.
The section of Safina’s book about the wolves of Yosemite reads like a soap opera, full of colourful characters with distinct personalities and dramatic lives. It got me to contemplating how much of this lupine self-determinism, if any, is left in my dog, whose species has, after all, given up “freedom, self-sufficiency and a sense of self-reliance,” as Safina puts it, in exchange for dependence.
By his very nature, my dog depends on me. He can never achieve full autonomy, yet sometimes I imagine I sense in him a deep and wordless inner conflict, an independence that will never be realised. The call of the wild.
Put another, more beautiful way, by Jacob Bacharach in his article for the New Inquiry: “What is it, a dog’s life? … We think of them as stupidly happy, but I think… the profundity of their love for us makes them helplessly sorrowful, which is why even in her moments of the utmost, unmediated joy, a joy that our own nervous and overactive minds makes essentially impossible, a dog’s eyes remain achingly sad.”
I wonder if I have a responsibility towards my dog to help maximise his potential in this life. How complete is his domestication? Surely there are opportunities for him to grow and apply himself — opportunities it’s my duty to facilitate.
Or maybe the regular food, long walks and nightly cuddles are enough. I don’t know, and, what’s more, I don’t know how I’ll ever know. I realise it’s ridiculous to talk about helping my dog self-actualise, and that I’m probably projecting. Really all I want to do is encourage reflection on the situation we find ourselves in. Dependence comes with a power imbalance, and its weighted in our favour.
It’s painful to think we are using our dogs, and that the affection, food and accommodation they get in return might not be a fair exchange. But it’s a thought worth having nonetheless.
If we’re serious about shifting humanity’s place on this Earth from master to equal among ecosystems, we can begin in our own backyard. We might start talking seriously about the way we treat and think about pets, ostensibly our codependents. Practices like puppy farming, pedigree breeding and all those unwanted animals in shelters across the world, speak louder than our constant assertions that dogs are man’s best friend.
Pets are not playthings. I’d go so far to say they’re not property either. They’re not there for entertainment, aesthetics or pleasure. Dogs and cats need us as much as we need them, but there is still plenty of work to be done on our side to draw back from the human desire to dominate and control — and not just for the sake of our non-human friends. Those impulses lead us to suffering, too.
