Animals

Waste Pets

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I am opposed to the notion of “rescue” pets and “shelters” that animal rights extremists have put forward lately. While I believe there should be a market for “used” and “salvage” pets like dogs and cats, I think the reason we should be “saving” unwanted or “stray” pets is not because they are cute or lovable, but because a “bred” pet involves a significant amount of labor and food to raise to become something that can be sold as a pet by the breeder.

So called “rescue” pets are usually a lot more affordable then “bred” pets. Not everybody can afford an expensive “bred” pet from a pet breeder. The “used” or “rescue” pet should be an affordable alternative, one that often comes house-broken or trained with skills not available on the “bred” market. Salvaging a used or stray dog and cat, should not be seen as a noble act, but one done to recover all the value and investment in that dog or cat. Shelters should not be seen as a shelters, but as salvage yards, there to recover useful value in the stock, rather then an entity to “save” a pet, for which there is an inexhaustible supply.

Dogs and cats are inherently reproducible. Dogs and cats not neutered have puppies and kittens. They can have lots of them. After all, they are livestock, they can be indefinitely bred to produce to future stock. There is skill in raising them, there are materials consumed to produce future generations of pets, but for all practical purposes, the supply of dogs and cats will never be used up. If anything, there is an over-supply of pets in parts of the country, with undesirable and unwanted pets in need of disposal.

Disposal of unwanted pets can be done in an environmentally sustainable fashion. In a landfill, they are organic material which is unlikely to release hazardous materials, except the normal organics like methane and organic leachate into the environment. The same is true with incineration of unwanted pets – they are made up almost entirely of water and carbon-based organics like fat, muscle, and hair – and incinerated a proper temperatures are unlikely to produce much besides carbon dioxide and water vapor. Most pets are carnivores, which poses more problems with composting, but most industrial composting facilities reach temperatures to kill off pathogens. Obviously, with our carbon constrained future, industrial composting of waste pets is the best solution for disposal.

Salvaging “waste” pets like dogs and cats, through so-called rescues makes sense, in so far as the pet has value. It saves resources to put a well-behaved, house broken but “unadopted” dog or a cat in a loving home, saving resources compared to raising a new dog or cat. It makes pet ownership more affordable for the working man. Salvage efforts through rescues, save energy, save human labor, save food, medicine, and other resources. But the disposal of unwanted pets with behavioral problems or injuries, that offer little value in resale, often makes sense as unwanted pets pose little ecological hazard in their disposal.

The forces that shut down Ringling Bros. want to end a lot more than animal abuse

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The forces that shut down Ringling Bros. want to end a lot more than animal abuse

"Unless your heart is forged of titanium, you cannot be in favor of cruelty to animals. It’s encouraging to know that Western society no longer tolerates the routine abuse of animals, wild or domestic — and such abuse was, until fairly recently, all too routine at circuses and elsewhere. But the crusade against Ringling, SeaWorld and other animal entertainment purveyors is something more. PETA, after all, holds that drinking milk and wearing leather shoes amount to animal exploitation. This movement doesn’t simply have animal welfare as its goal; it has an ideological component: the idea that human beings have no special moral standing in the universe and cannot claim dominion over other living creatures, no matter how well they treat them.

The PETA motto sums it up: “Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.” For the truest believers, the idea is, any use of an animal by a human is abuse.

PETA wants people to go not just vegetarian (cows feel fear) but vegan (eating eggs exploits chickens). It opposes not just experiments on living animals in labs but the dissection of already dead animals in school biology classes. The ASPCA and the Humane Society have campaigned to ban horse-drawn carriages in New York City. Some activists want to prevent the buying and selling of dogs (only “companion animals” rescued from shelters are OK). Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, a self-professed opponent of “speciesism,” wrote in 1979 that “the life of a newborn [human] is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”

The implications of this position are sweeping. It might be OK to teach Fido to fetch (as long as you use positive reinforcement), but PETA and others maintain that using dogs to guide the blind is morally problematic (service dogs have to “work day after day”). Among true believers, it’s morally wrong to ride a horse or show a dog at Westminster. The movement’s blanket opposition to animal testing of drugs discounts the desperation of parents whose baby might be saved. And don’t even think about buying a sweater (sheep exploitation), let alone that fur coat."

Dogs Use Deception to Get Treats, Study Shows

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Dogs Use Deception to Get Treats, Study Shows

"Researchers observed the pooches leading the cooperative partner to the box containing the sausage more often than expected by chance. They led the competitive partner to the sausage less often than expected by chance. And here’s where things get really interesting: the dogs took the competitive partner to the empty box more frequently than the cooperative partner, suggesting that they were working through their options and engaging in deliberate deception to maximize their chances of getting both treats."