You guys, the libs over at The Guardian are at it again. This time, it's pets they're trying to get rid of.
"Is it time to give up our cats and dogs"?!?!
Maybe it's time for you to give up your job in journalism.
Goodness!
Alright, anyhow, I saw no mention of climate change, global warming, or global cooling in this article, believe it or not, so great job there, Guardian. But I did see a whole lot of this in this 1,700-word anti-pet piece. Let's dive in a little, shall we?
We may think that we are giving our companions rounded lives and putting them first when we rise early for walkies or clean up another accident. But Vettese, an environmental historian who specialises in animal studies, says the suffering of his family's much-loved bird is evidence that pet ownership is not about the animals.
"If people really cared about animals, we would only engage in rescues and helping animal sanctuaries' wildlife rehabilitation - things that we find fulfilling, but that also help the animal," he says. Instead, "we only like relationships where they are easy, where the pets are well maintained, where we can hire a dog walker, where it impinges as little as possible on our life and we are extracting as much emotional support as we want from them". To his mind, it is definitely "a very selfish relationship".
Got that? A guy with a parrot says you have a "very selfish relationship" with your pet. Must be true, because I've learned throughout my life to always trust a guy with a parrot on his shoulder — scout's honor.
Moving onto more negativity from The Guardian:
Trends in pet ownership could be taken as evidence of this: 24% of all owners in the UK got their pet in the past two years, with a total of 5.4m pets acquired since 2020, according to a recent report by the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals. During Covid lockdowns, people were bored at home, allowed out only to take walks - on which a dog provided company. In the immediate aftermath, as people went back to work and realised a musclebound American bully XL dog wasn't going to love being alone in a flat all day, lots of animal shelters were overrun; many continue to be, as a consequence of the cost of living crisis.
So I get it, Covid was weird, especially for people who lived in unfree nations such as England. It makes me a tad bit upset that people essentially returned pets once things started to open up, but a lot of weird things happened during Covid. This one I'll agree with them on, but only because Covid was a hiccup to our normal lives.
I'll give you a few more of these paragraphs, but then I have to stop. This lady wrote a whole 1,700 words here and I'm starting to get exhausted.
Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist and the author of Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets, says: "We're at a really weird place, and definitely a place that is unlike any we've been in the past." She cites a new report on the pet industry in the US that puts the figure of US households with pets at 70%: "That's unbelievable!"
It isn't just the scale of pet ownership that has mushroomed in recent years, Pierce says, but also what she describes as the "intensity" of pet ownership: "They are much more intensively captive than they have been in the past." She takes the example of dogs, which, in general, "have less and less freedom to move around the world and be dogs".
The way we breed animals now - for traits that we find cute, docile or hypoallergenic - is at dizzying new heights. "Dogs and cats are more and more treated like objects, products, a substrate, not like beings," says Pierce, who grew up with dogs, cats and "a bunch of other pets". It was when history repeated itself and her young daughter had her own menagerie that she "started to really look at the ethics of it". She points to breeds such as "pugs and boxers, which have lifelong quality-of-life compromises".
I'm sorry, but do these people want human rights for pets? Like, my pet is my pet. I take care of my pet. If I can't take care of it, I shouldn't have gotten a pet. My dog loves being "held captive" in my house. Sure, she runs away sometimes, but that's only when we want to play "escaped prisoner," which is a whole lot of fun! Seriously though, are there people out there who don't treat their pets well? Sure. But I don't think that's what they're talking about here. I think they're talking about normal people who have normal pets who live comfortably in their home.
Last paragraph, because I just can't even with these people.
The global pet industry is vast - worth $320bn, according to one report - and increasingly humanised; products cash in on our desire to spoil animals and shower them with a very human, consumerist kind of love. The psychology is complicated, and pet owners might feel they are indulging their animals, but how much is that high-concept toy really about your hamster?
Okay, I'm over it. These people are trying to demonize us for spoiling our pets. Craziest thing I've heard in a while.
My dog loves the toys we get her, she loves the backyard, she loves the dog park. Maybe these writers at The Guardian need to get out of London for a minute or two and see what real pet ownership is all about.
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