I think pet ownership is somewhat cruel

[torpid]

Originally posted by: MagnusTheBrewer
Not to hijack the thread or start another religion thread but, dogs are my pet case for the existence of God. You see, I believe a few thousand years of domestication is simply not enough to account for the differences between dogs and wolves in behavior, eating habits, breeding and personality.

Therefore, it is reasonable to me that God said to the wolves one day, "You lot over there, will become dogs." "Roger, wilco. What's a dog?"

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

You are wrong. See above about the russian dude.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: MagnusTheBrewer
Not to hijack the thread or start another religion thread but, dogs are my pet case for the existence of God. You see, I believe a few thousand years of domestication is simply not enough to account for the differences between dogs and wolves in behavior, eating habits, breeding and personality.

Therefore, it is reasonable to me that God said to the wolves one day, "You lot over there, will become dogs." "Roger, wilco. What's a dog?"

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

You are wrong. See above about the russian dude.

You are entitled to your beliefs. I speak to atheists every day but, I don't believe in them. 🙂

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: MagnusTheBrewer

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: MagnusTheBrewer
Not to hijack the thread or start another religion thread but, dogs are my pet case for the existence of God. You see, I believe a few thousand years of domestication is simply not enough to account for the differences between dogs and wolves in behavior, eating habits, breeding and personality.

Therefore, it is reasonable to me that God said to the wolves one day, "You lot over there, will become dogs." "Roger, wilco. What's a dog?"

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

You are wrong. See above about the russian dude.

You are entitled to your beliefs. I speak to atheists every day but, I don't believe in them. 🙂

You are wrong because it took less than 40 years to turn wild foxes into domestic pets. Thousands of years is plenty of time. It has nothing to do with faith vs lack of faith, just simple science. Now if you want to suggest that somehow this study is not applicable to wolves, feel free. But it is plenty of time by any "rational" account.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: MagnusTheBrewer

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: MagnusTheBrewer
Not to hijack the thread or start another religion thread but, dogs are my pet case for the existence of God. You see, I believe a few thousand years of domestication is simply not enough to account for the differences between dogs and wolves in behavior, eating habits, breeding and personality.

Therefore, it is reasonable to me that God said to the wolves one day, "You lot over there, will become dogs." "Roger, wilco. What's a dog?"

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

You are wrong. See above about the russian dude.

You are entitled to your beliefs. I speak to atheists every day but, I don't believe in them. 🙂

:laugh:

Surely you're joking about the dogs thing though...

 

[Ruptga]

You suck at (understanding) life

 

[Shadowknight]

I have a skewed perspective, having rescued multiple stray animals in my neighborhood (my porch is a cat magnet for some reason).

Some are tame and WANT to live with a human
Some are feral but tamable, and seem okay, if not greatly happy, about living with me, in part because of his physical condition when I found him (half his stool was blood thanks to tapeworms, and he had scratches on his face)
Some are caught young enough where living with a human is natural
Some really really need help. See this thread I posted a year ago: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...id=38&threadid=2059770
Some you have to hold on to despite them being happier outside; feral cats stop hunting if you give them food on a regular basis. One of them ate at my porch for awhile, disappeared for two months, and came back with maybe 10% bodyfat. I kind of have to hold onto them despite them wanting to be elsewhere.

 

[OUCaptain]

Originally posted by: jjones
Except for fish. Fish are actually just fish.

and mice. They want us to think we are the ones experimenting on them.

 

[Mr Pickles]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: Mr Pickles
I don't agree with the slavery thing, but I do agree that owning a pet is sincerely selfish. The initial decision to get a pet is sparked from selfish motives. An owner has a pre-conceived idea of what to expect from a pet. The owner trains the pet to be affectionate by rewarding it with toys, treats, or even simple things like belly rubs and even body heat or the feeling of safety while close to their master. This would be an ideal example of a pet\owner relationship. If you look at the opposite, a bad relationship between pet and owner, its more obvious. Take, for example, an annoying cat that sits under the bed and hides all day until its time to be fed. If a second cat were part of the family and gave the owner the things it wanted like attention, affection, and all around respect, it would naturally be liked more. The annoying cat would still be fed, simply because the owner isn't going to be responsible for its death, but there's no trade off for the owner's efforts so the animal doesn't fill its part in the agreement. That agreement, the return of respect, is the base reason for even owning a pet, which is why it is selfish to own a pet in the first place.

My initial decision to have a pet happened because I was doing a friend a favor and pet sitting. When the person came back, she was so busy that she barely had time to care for the cat for months. Even though I am allergic to cats, we both felt it would be better for the CAT to stay at my place.

I do not train my cat to be affectionate. In fact, I try to train him to be less affectionate, but it doesn't work. I would like to be able to train him not to take a swipe at my glasses every time he is within 6 inches of my face but that doesn't work either. As such, I think your entire point is either invalid or overly generalized since it clearly does not apply to me.

Yes, his point is flat out wrong and stupid. Our cats love us regardless of how we act toward them. If I push them off my lap and walk away, as soon as I sit down somewhere else one or both jump up in my lap again. We've had them since they were 6 weeks old and never spent a single second training them to "love us", yet they still do.

Our dog pisses herself every day when I come home because she is so happy. I don't make her do all kinds of stupid tricks for a treat or make her want to be good so I'll like her more. We rescued her from the pound and it is very obvious she knows we took her out of a bad situation and put her in a better one. As an added benefit we love her to death and she loves us. ^^ You are a finely tuned dumbass.

Of course there are exceptions, and rescuing an animal from an unsafe environment is definitely a good exception. I might not be explaining this right, but I think I am, so maybe you guys are having a hard time seeing this side of things. This debate is definitely more difficult with cats and dogs. They are a popular house pet for good reason; they have the ability to respond to human interaction with what looks to be a mutual understanding of companionship. But I still stick to my theory that a cat or a dog is what torpid calls "affectionate" simply because his cat considers him an equal. Maybe the cat's last owner was really good at petting him and now torpids cat knows that if he gets close to a human their natural reaction is to pet him. The glasses thing might just be the playful nature of a cat in general.

Mrdudeman your case is much easier. Owning a pet from a very young age almost guarantees that you will be considered equal. Not being in the mood to be close is not grounds for a cat to be concerned about coming close again later on. You are a static icon in the cat's mind, so one small instance isn't something the cat will keep in its long term memory bank. Suffice it to say it would be a different story if whenever they got close to you, you spanked them or were harmful to them in some other way. They have learned, again indirectly, to trust you.

I'm not attacking your love for your dog, in fact I'm defending it. Taking your dog out of a bad place and putting it in a good one is awesome. I can't agree that your dog is thankful for it, though. He may be more comfortable, but we give the dog's intelligence a little too much credit. Granted, he now knows the difference between a good and bad environment now and of course he'll choose the environment that you have provided for him. I'm sure the things your dog does are not because he is still thankful that you rescued him.

It sounds as though your dog has a classic case of seperation anxiety. He spends his whole life with other beings around him and then is at home for hours on end alone. Who wouldn't be excited when someone comes home! This one is almost a no brainer. Even with people still in the house, its a classic reaction to be excited to see and smell people they haven't been with all day. Especially if you are as good a pet owner as you say you are.

I hate to say it, but even though I entertained these argument topics, neither of the examples displayed the main point of my initial response, which is that humans are selfish for owning a pet. I entered this thread stating that I don't agree with the slavery part. If I did agree with the slavery part, then gauging the animal's happiness is definitely something that can be used to defend the fact that animals are not slaves. But my focus was the selfishness of pet owners. You telling me that your pet is happy or that you don't train your pet to be happy is not relevant to the selfish act owning a pet. The only good thing we can take away from these two instances is the examples of animal rescue, which is a great exception to the rule and something that should be noted.

EDIT: I had planned to add another note to this but it became way to long and will probably go to spoil. In the beginning I mentioned that dogs and cats are probably the toughest of animals to speak about because they appear to show such an equal love to their owner. I compared the cat and dog to that of a fish, or a reptile or rodent in a cage. Its much easier to debate caged animals because its more obvious that the human in this case just wants either companionship, or they even just want the ability to say "hey, I have a <enter exotic reptile or fish>". The caged animal gives us this, and in return they must reside in an enclosed space for the rest of their life. Hardly a good deal, but we convince ourselves that they are happy, even though their happiness is really a matter of being "content" because they don't know the life they could be living outside of such a cage. That was very generalized, very broad, and very straight without much support. I just thought I would get that in there.