Dogs

How good a friend are we?

Dogs have a special status in human society – the status of friends. They are therefore in a much better and safer situation than many other animals who suffer under human exploitation. But how good a friend are we to dogs?

Dogs are bought and sold in order to meet human beings’ desires for outdoor activities or pleasure – hunting, guard dogs, dog shows, competitions. Dogs are judged according to performance, price and pedigree. When dogs are no longer “fun”, when they need medical treatment or get old and need more care and attention – when the “friendship” becomes demanding and not simply pleasurable for human beings – there are some who turn their backs on their “friend” and have them killed. Some go ever further, and take the lives of puppies who have the “wrong” colour and patterning, puppies that can’t be sold for profit – for these people, dogs are first and foremost commercial goods. And because of this, there is a steady stream of “unwanted” dogs – dogs that are left over because the buyer changed their mind, and for whom it is difficult to find new homes, because breeders are constantly filling the market with new young animals.

Dogs and humans have a long shared history – but it is a history marked by human beings demanding unconditional friendship and giving much less in return: training techniques that are more like torture techniques; a lack of understanding of dogs’ needs and a lack of willingness to allow dogs to experience joy in their lives rather than an endless line of duties and demands; buying and selling dogs, and valuing them by their monetary worth and incidental criteria such as their breed or “usability”; killing dogs who want to continue to live. If we want to call dogs our “best friends”, we need to demonstrate that we are deserving of their friendship.