I’m against pet ownership. As a black person, I am especially sensitive to the concept of owning other beings. However, I’ve discovered that society’s collective takeaway from the historical experience of chattel slavery in the U.S. was primarily that it was unacceptable to own other humans and treat humans as property. Owning animals was never off the table, because humans are not animals. But following that logic, why do people feel comfortable referring to their pets as their children, and themselves as parents. Do you own your children? Do you treat them as your property? By simultaneously using language to both humanize animals and treat them as property, we quickly slide back down into that whole thing about it being absolutely unacceptable to own other humans and treat them as property.
First, let’s be clear. All animals already have parents. The human does not give birth to the animal. Calling yourself a pet’s parent without acknowledging and honoring an animal’s real parents (now and for the rest of the animal’s life) is at best weird and confusing for the animal, and at worst, potentially offensive and painful to the parent who gave birth to that animal. There seems to be this weird assumption that humans have, that female dogs don’t care about interacting with and wanting to be with ALL of their children after a certain time period after they are born, and I find that assumption to be absolutely mind boggling. My opinion is this assumption is more a reflection of the human’s inability to understand what they are observing, not a lack of love or care or desire to relinquish are motherly responsibilities, on the part of the dog.
Unless a pet owner has no knowledge of an animal’s origins or those origins were abusive/neglectful, if you believe in treating your pet as your child, the first responsibility to this animal is to ensure the animal maintains a connection with their family. Parents, siblings, previous owners… these figures represent the animals heart bonds and support system. When parents divorce or separate, it’s common to try and make sure the children spend time with each parent and visitations are arranged to ensure the child’s emotional and mental health needs are being met. I hardly see anyone selling or giving away animals who are also keeping track of the homes that puppies, from the same mother, go to when they are separated. Nor do I see new owners taking their pet to visit their siblings in other homes. For some reason, this type of visitation is not deemed important, but pets experience emotions just like humans and that includes grief, loss, loneliness, and anxiety when separated from their loved ones and existing support systems.
The next responsibility as a parent would be communication. I was in Panda Express the other day and there was a lady there showing off her dog that she was holding. When she finally put him down, instead of allowing the dog to walk, she carted him around in a stroller like a baby. The dog was small, but the dog was not a puppy. But for the rest of its life as this person’s pet, it would be treated as a small child. How would this woman or any pet parent know whether the dog was happy with being treated like a baby for the entirety of its existence? And how would this dog ever successfully convey dismay, embarrassment, or anger at this treatment?
From what I can observe, a dog has four basic modes of communication: bark, growl, whine, and tail position. Prolonged barks, growls, and whines are generally not tolerated and therefore silenced with raised voices and commands when it becomes annoying or an owner doesn’t want to bother neighbors, etc. If an animal starts to growl too much or show too much aggression, the consequences can range from being 1) scolded as a bad dog, 2) being hit, 3) being sent away to obedience school, or 4) being put down for fear of endangering a family member or stranger. Therefore, the dog basically doesn’t have any way of communicating “NO” in a safe manner or in a manner that is not threatening to the owner. And so, silence from an animal is often mistaken as agreement with what an owner is doing. But giving an animal a voice and a “NO” in the pet/owner relationship is the single most important thing that distinguishes a person from having a pet and a person holding an animal captive in their home.
Parents are legally required to ensure their child gets an education. It’s been shown that chimps, dogs, and parrots can comprehend information and perform certain problem-solving skills at the level of at least a 4th grade child. However, my intuition tells me that 4th grade level is nowhere near the max of the animal’s potential and has more to do with human’s limited ability to understand animals. So, if a 4th grade reading level is baseline for educational attainment for certain pets, then it should be the responsibility of the pet parent to ensure their pet is allowed to reach its full intellectual potential. When pet owners leave their pets at home all day, except for occasional walks, it doesn’t for the pet to reach its full potential . Taking pets to school, investing money to provide educational toys and continuous opportunities for intellectual stimulation would all now be part of being a good pet parent.
Parents take their human children to play dates and try to encourage social friendships at school and with neighbors because they understand how important socialization is to a child’s development. Pets are often left along for long periods of the day with nobody to socialize with and when the pet’s owner is home, they are limited in their ability to socialize with 1-3 people that are a part of the existing family system. For pet birds, goldfish, turtles, and snakes, socialization is often limited to human beings and no socialization is allowed with others of a similar species. For pet dogs, socialization with other dogs is tightly controlled on a leash. In passing on sidewalks, the socialization with other dogs is brief and always monitored under a watchful eye. Socialization with other dogs at a dog park is occasional and on the owner’s time limit, not the dogs.
Owners don’t know what their pet’s social needs are because they have not given the pet tools to communicate (e.g. Fluent Pet (Explain what this is), or they do not even think it is an important question to ask an animal. I watched a YouTube video years ago of a dog that leaves its house and waits at the bus stop, rides the bus to the park each day while its owners are at work, gets exercise and plays with others, and then rides the bus back home. The logistics of implementing that on a larger scale in a safe way are for society to figure out, but I’m sure most pet owners would be surprised to know that a dog was capable of doing this and that they are fully capable of meeting their own needs when given a sense of agency over their own experience.
In a similar vein, do pets want and need hobbies/interests in the same way that humans need to have them to feel fulfilled? I watched a YouTube video the other day of a cat that goes surfing with its owners in Hawaii. The owners had the idea to take their cat to the beach with them one day and put him on the surfboard and the cat seemed to enjoy riding the waves and swimming in the ocean so much, that they built a place within the surfboard for the cat to sit safely and comfortably and now it’s a hobby that they share together.
The common perception of many cat owners is that cats are lazy and enjoy doing mostly nothing all day. That the occasional cat nip, a toy mouse, and a laser dot to chase is sufficient for stimulation. It’s the responsibility of a pet parent to invest time and money in identifying hobbies and interests of their pet and then helping to cultivate them. Maybe they would enjoy gardening, skateboarding, or collecting music from Russian composers from the 1930’s… Have you ever considered that maybe your pets tear apart the furniture while you’re at work, because they the intellectual capacity of a fourth grader and are fucking bored to death all day.
Finally, I think everyone would agree that parents would be arrested and imprisoned if they made their human child sleep in a cage or on the ground in the backyard every night. But for some reason, that has become acceptable for pets. It seems almost logical that an animal would want to sleep outdoors, but even though I enjoy the peace and tranquility of camping outdoors from time to time, I generally prefer things with cushions like beds and couches most of the time and spaces that don’t remind me of being in jail. When animals are on their own in the wild, they can find a place to sleep that’s comfortable and warm and arrange their surroundings (with leaves, branches, natural shading, etc.) in a way that feels good to them. When they are owned, they are limited to confined areas like a stall, cage, or a doghouse or a backyard where there’s grass, concrete, and often little area that’s shaded. In that case, it might be preferable to have a place of their own indoors.
Are pet parents then responsible for giving dogs their own rooms like they would a child? It’s worth considering the pet’s experience. If you were a dog and had to live in a house with a family of four, wouldn’t you enjoy having your own room where you could go and close the door, work on a hobby, get away from the noise of the tv, yelling of the family, weird human smells, or simply fart in peace without being called a bad dog? I honestly have no idea if that’s what most pets would want, but that’s the point. Having a relationship with someone you own, where you control every aspect of their experience but can’t communicate with them in any sort of nuanced way, creates a blind spot for pet parents where they mistake silence for happiness and assume their pets needs are being met, even when they are not.