Dump Your Pet
II. Counterpoint: Pets Can't Talk
III. Final Word: Balls to Play With
Point: Pets Peeve
Now that slavery's beeen rightfully outlawed, people of all colors seeking domesticated dependents over which they can have total control must resort to those unfortunate creatures we call pets. Pet owners will tell you it’s all about love, but what kind? Love of small creatures, or love of things dependent on you? It is easy to attack pet owners for being lonely people in desperate need of the unconditional love a pet can provide and which the pet owner cannot manage to elicit from the world at large, but I don’t see anything wrong with this phenomenon. If it really were about finding something to love that would love you back—well, so be it. But that’s not what most pet ownership is about. Pet ownership is all about power.
Pets are quasi-human creatures that are valued for their ability to seem human while never developing beyond a kind of infant-like state out of which no revolution can ever be born. They are, in other words, sort of human but always less than human. An abused dog never has a chance of overthrowing its cruel master. It must suffer its abuse and at best take its frustrations out on things less likely to bite back: the mailman, passing children, and creatures generally smaller than itself.
The infant-like state of pets keeps their psychology simple, and allows every would-be master to feel superior to their trained beasts. As companions, pets are the equivalent of friends dumber than you; they will never challenge you and tell you that you are wrong, and you will always feel clever by comparison. There’s a reason why ‘lapdog’ and ‘Pavlovian’ mean what they do.
Further evidence of the power dynamics inherent in pet ownership is exposed through an examination of just how thoroughly being a “pet” requires the full subversion of the otherwise natural tendencies of the creature possessed. Dogs are collared, muzzled, and leashed; fish are sequestered in a small tank and made to stay relatively put; and birds? They get it worst of all. They are put in a cage and so completely denied their most basic forms of motion that only veal could say it has it worse. Only cats seem to get off pretty easy, and cats may therefore be the one unmasterable pet—although their prissy arrogance has always created a certain amount of distrust between humans and felines. I have no doubt that if cats grew to the size of mountain lions, they would eat their owners.
Moreover, pets are animals torn from a world in which they would be able to exist naturally and placed into a world in which they absolutely cannot function without the constant attention of a human master. This environment of enforced, isolated dependency is common in situations of domestic violence, indentured servitude, and prostitution, where people are forced through various means to do what they are told because they need something that they can now only get from the person telling them what to do. And the only way a pet is ever getting out of this situation is to slip out into the street and get plastered by a bus, or start scrounging for scraps and rats with the diseased mutts in the alley.
But if you don’t buy that as a pet owner you are Hitler without a furnace, then perhaps you can be swayed by the inconvenience argument—because pet are damned inconvenient. Bringing a pet into your home is like bringing in a child: you have to make sure it is fed and taken care of, that it gets the shots it needs, the cleaning it needs, and that there is someone to take care of it when you go anywhere. Pets don’t change that much over the course of their existence, and no pet will ever become smart enough to get a job and pay for its own Purina.
A lot of effort goes into the maintenance of a pet, but what are the rewards? Well, you get something that is more or less happy to have you around, but eventually this gets kind of old. Face it: you will never want to play with your dog as much as your dog will want to play with you. And even if you don’t mind the inconvenience and believe that you are a very nice animal-slave-owner and that your little dumb furry slave loves you—even if all of that is true, there is still the fundamental truth that you will let your pet down. You will disappoint it, because a pet is a prisoner—your prisoner—but it has been made to love you, and love you it does. You are the most important thing in its world, but this feeling is something you will never be able to reciprocate simply because of the fact that for you, the pet is a peripheral entity—a side benefit that you enjoy visiting with now and then. Eventually, the pet’s continued entreaties for attention will grow annoying, because you’ve seen all the animal’s tricks before and you’re kind of bored. Or maybe you just have something else to do that’s more important than an unending game of fetch the nasty, gnarled bone that your dog’s been drooling on for the last month. In the end, there is hardly a better way to give yourself a guilty conscience than have some sorry animal neglected in your home that loves you more than you’ll ever love it. Children are ultimately more satisfying, because eventually they grow out of diapers, start talking, and start changing into strange creatures that you lose the ability to predict (often to your dismay).
Owning pets is the privilege of the dominant race. Having subservient creatures in every suburban household is just another way we cling to our old habits of monarchical rule over lesser subjects. It is another way we, the kings and queens of the earth, show our hegemony to the rest of the natural world.
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Counterpoint: Pets Can't Talk
Cruella DeKristopher has obviously been watching too many Disney movies. Disney realized long ago that children like Kris are willing to believe that animals can share the full range of human thought, reasoning, and emotion. This allows the animators to violently kill off their characters and make children the world over force their parents to purchase remembrances of their fallen heroes, without ever earning anything over a “G” rating no matter how many does get clipped.
The anthropomorphization of animals is part of the human condition. The tendency is so strong that archeologists regard the trait as one of the defining characteristics of human intelligence. I am not well versed enough in human psychology to know why we do this. All I can say with any level of confidence is that anthropomorphization leads us to making many faulty assumptions about what animals “want,” “need,” or “like.” In his piece, Kris makes a number of such mistakes.
Applying a concept like freedom as distinct from servitude to an animal is simply ridiculous. Humans themselves differ on what freedom is and on what servitude is. Can we ever be free in a society where unevenly gained and distributed money controls your access to such basic essentials as food? Who knows? That is a deep philosophical question. Importing such metaphysical questions to a goldfish is foolish. A goldfish lives in a world where food falls from the sky and it is able to explore the very limits of the universe (as it perceives the universe) without the dastardly presence of predators. Would the fish give up its pampered existence for a bigger, yet more dangerous and uncertain world? Kris doesn’t know and more to the point neither does the damn goldfish. It can’t make a risk/reward analysis between its experiences and the hypothetical experiences of another “more free” goldfish. Only a being that is relatively self aware can yearn to breath free. Saying a fish is a slave is kind of like saying that a flower would “much rather” live in a forest, but humans kind of absconded with these creatures and forced them to beautify gardens “against their will.” I’m not saying that a goldfish is happy; I’m saying that a goldfish does not recognize the emotional state of happiness like you or I. People should stop ascribing human emotions to animals just because we have a capacity for empathy that most animals do not.
Now, some animals are clearly kidnapped and caged and clearly attempt to break free of their bondage given any reasonable opportunity. I would agree with Kris that these abductors and usurpers of the natural order are generally bad human beings looking to enslave whatever they can get their hands on. We must distinguish between pets and captured animals, and to do that we have to rely on science. Most people intuitively understand that there is a difference between “wild” animals and “domesticated” animals. What people forget is that the difference between the two is not one of training or size or even a more nebulous conception of familiarity with humans. The process of domestication is an evolutionary process that was started long before “The Dog Whisperer” and has left us with beings that are genetically distinct from their “wild” counterparts. Domesticated animals are not “tamed” wild animals, but something else entirely. For example, a house cat is not a very small mountain lion; it is a distinct creature. If a mutant house cat grew to the size of a mountain lion it would still act like a house cat. In contrast if you abducted a cub right out of the womb of its mountain lion mother, it would still eventually start acting like a mountain lion that would eat you as soon as it was hungry and had an opportunity to do so. You can not undo millions of years of evolution with carrots and tasers. You can, through generations of selective breeding, alter the genetic code of an animal, and that is what we have done with house pets.
I am making no defense as to the ethics of capturing once wild creatures and changing them into things that can no longer survive as they once did. I am simply pointing out that this is what has been done, and any conception of pet ownership cannot be separated from that historic enterprise. Humans have bred companion animals—animals that are unable to survive without human intervention—yet under our care can thrive. A snake, a bird, an elephant, these animals just need us to leave them alone and they’ll be fine. A German Shepard on the other hand (and we are talking about a large, intelligent animal here that would look relatively equipped to defend itself) is a tasty meal for a pack of young wolves. Lassie is mountain lion for burrito. To treat these domesticated animals any differently is like telling me to go bring down a buffalo for my village using only my wits and a large stick. Sure, at one time in my evolution I probably could have done that, but now even Wal-Mart requires a level of hunting acumen that is beyond me.
Taking together Kris’s unnatural anthropomorphization of animals and his poor understanding of the evolutionary process of domestication, we can finally cauterize his festering contention that having a pet means that you’ve brought something into your home that will always love you more than you can love it. A house pet is an amazing creature that is purposefully designed to function in our world as our companions and occasional helpers. In addition to the basic necessities of life, they require everything that we’ve bred them to require. That includes companionship with their patriarch/matriarch. That includes a sense of belonging and an understanding of where their place is in the hierarchy. Pets are not ambitious in the human sense of the word, they do not want to overthrow or subvert the rulers. What they do want to know is who is in charge, and if it’s you, fine. If it’s them, well they will act accordingly. A well cared for pet feels no “love imbalance” rather they feel they are loved exactly as they are supposed to be. A good pet owner provides their charge a secure place in the world, and that is all they ask for. My dog will do all of the things becoming of her “delta” status in my pack. Sometimes that means playing with me, sometimes that means taking me out for a walk. Yes, sometimes that means trying to get my attention, and I will occasionally withhold that attention because of Civ or sports or sleep. Kris would have me believe that she is “disappointed” in those times and feels unloved. I think he is wrong. I think that when I am too busy to do what she wants me to do, she is more than satisfied to sit by my feet and exist in an eternal state of hope that I might drop something tasty. More than Kris, I think she understands what it means to be a dog.
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Final Word: Balls to Play With
So as you can see, I was more right than I knew.
I mean, did you see what he just did? How he distracted you from the point that I was making (and made, quite brilliantly) and tried to make it about something else? Believe it or not, I was not talking about the emotional wear and tear of being a pet on the pet itself; I was talking about how the pet makes its owner feel. I was talking about the joy of power that comes with the mastery of creatures less fortunate than ourselves.
First of all, making a statement such as “all contestants on NBC’s show Deal or No Deal exhibit such an absurd superstitious streak (they agonize over the choice of a particular case, as if anything but blind luck were actually involved) that I am forced to conclude that most Americans really are impressively illogical” does not mean I believe that being superstitious is the rational way to go. If I were on Deal or No Deal, I wouldn’t waste anyone’s time agonizing over which case to choose—I’d probably just go straight across the top row or whatever. It would make little difference in the final outcome, I am sure. Likewise, my claim that pet owners feel guilty over their pets was meant to describe the particular state of mind that is called “being a pet owner”—not my particular outlook.
I fully accept that pets do not have consciousness on the order of their human masters. What I do not accept is that anyone who has a pet does anything but anthropomorphize the critter that shares its owner’s space. Elie, while pointing to scientific evidence of this ubiquitous affliction, is also a perfect example of this behavior. For all his bluster on the subject of the Disney-ification of pets, Elie still fails in his argument to avoid anthropomorphizing his dog. He describes his dog as taking him out for a walk. He speaks in his final paragraph about how pets are not unhappy, but ‘eternally hopeful,’ ‘more than satisfied,’ and—worst of all—that his dog ‘understands what it means’ to be a dog. I, for one, am happy to know that his little furry friend is going to score high on that particular essay question when it comes time for its D-SATs (ah-ooo!), but none of this actually addresses anything I was talking about in my original argument.
Let’s break it down:
1. Elie says pets are not human. So did I—in my second paragraph. I called them quasi-human (and only because pet owners dress them up in little human shirts and generally like to make pretend), which I believe is roughly translatable as ‘not human’ or ‘only pretend human’.
2. Elie says pets have been fully domesticated to the point of being useless in the wild. So did I—in my fifth paragraph.
3. Elie tries to parry against my magnificent lunge that cats want to eat their masters with some weak argument about how mountain lions would eat you if you tried to raise them in your home. Well ... yeah. I believe my argument still holds here. Let’s see. If mountain lions ... grew to the size of, erm, mountain lions, they would ... ah ... um ... eat you. Right. What I said. Again. Another point for me! [And I still say your house cat would eat you, too, if it grew to the size of a mountain lion. You would come home one day, and you would see little Fluffy (or sort-of-big Fluffy) creeping toward you, low to the ground, muscles tensed ... ready to pounce. Same for dogs, but with less pouncing and more snarling and biting.]
4. Elie has nothing to say on the subject of owners liking their pets because of their pets’ inferiority. Guess that’s a score for me.
5. Elie does not counter the point that pets are boring, inconvenient, provide limited returns, and after awhile just get in the way. That’s another ... what, four? We’ll say three, just to keep this from turning into a bloodbath.
6. Elie says pets like things just the way they are. While I do agree that they are continually pleased by a person’s presence (usually), here is where I can finally bury his argument.
You see, because no matter what kind of species you are, there are two things you like above all else. Elie brought up the first: food. All creatures like food, and it is something that your dog likes, too. We all know this. Doesn’t take an anthropomorphizer to swallow that one.
The other thing we all like is sex: I like it, you like it, the credit card companies like it, and your dog would’ve liked it, too—if you hadn’t cut off its balls. Or gotten it fixed. It’s a lucky mutt that lives as long as its testicles. Most of them are condemned to sexless lives, sequestered as they are within the walls of domiciles where there are no creatures willing to help them gratify their urges (we hope). If you have any doubt as to the level of sexual frustration of your pet, take note of all the times you have to apologize for the sex-starved beast humping your friends’ legs. And it’s not just male dogs, either; female dogs are just as randy. Pets are most definitely not satisfied by their given sexual arrangement, nor are they ever for that matter satisfied by the amount or type of food they are usually allowed. For this type of control, most people have to endure long relationships and employ lots of emotional blackmail and other trickery. With pets, it’s easy: we’re bigger, we’re smarter, and we have all the scissors and opposable thumbs required to work them. It’s not about love; it’s about power and making creatures do what we want and not do what we don’t want. We’re so proud of our ability to control, we make contests based around the idea.
It might be called doggie-style, but that doesn’t mean we think it’s for the dogs.