I Got a Beef With PETA and Mercy For Animals

I have tremendous respect and affection for animals.  I appreciate all of them, the human ones and the non-human ones.  I think all animals should live as nature intended, if nature intends anything.  I don't tell other people how to live, and I don't try to exert power over the ways non-human animals live.

I donate, automatically and every month, to PETA and Mercy For Animals.  I agree with them when they try to confront the mistreatment of animals.  Those two organizations and I diverge over only two issues.  Both organizations are strong advocates of vegan diets for human animals.  I, however, accept that animals eat other animals, and people eat other animals.  I have restricted to a vegan diet in the past, and it was fine, but I decided that I could be ethical and merciful to animals without so restricting.  What I do is try to restrict to eating meat from animals that were treated ethically and mercifully during their lives, and killed humanely.  I don't say PETA and MFA are wrong.  And there have been deeply revered thinkers and philosophers who agreed with them.  I admit I do not exist on the very highest possible ethical plane, when it comes to eating animals.  I accept my own failing, and I hope that the caveat I impose is in some sense good enough.  But I do acknowledge the lapse.

The other area where PETA and MFA and I diverge is about the domestication of animals.  I think it's rank cruelty.  I think it's inexcusable.  I have asked both organizations to adopt as part of their overall mission a crusade against the domestication of animals.  They won't do it.  PETA's position (excuse?) is that the animals people domesticate have been bred so that they are incapable of living without the stewardship of human owners.  What a load...!  Even if you could try to make that argument about Yorkshire terriers and maybe pomeranians, you couldn't really make it about any other animal people domesticate.  And PETA and MFA do advocate against "puppy mills," pet store animals, and, up to a point, breeding in general.  So, up to a point, they get it.  But they won't pull the real trigger.  And if you want to know if I think PETA and MFA members and staff have domesticated animals themselves, yeah, I think they do.  I think they think they love animals, and they love, and show love to, their pets.  At that point, they stop getting it.  It's like the time several months ago that Donald Trump or one of his people said slavery wasn't bad, because the slaves were treated well.  Setting aside that that isn't remotely true, no normal person would have any trouble recognizing what was wrong with slavery, even if the slaves had been treated well.

I was out walking this morning, and I encountered a man with two Siberian huskies.  It was about 8:10.  We had a brief conversation about his two beautiful dogs, and it was he who mentioned how much they don't like the "humidity."  He takes them out early, to avoid it.  (He was a bit late today.  I guess it wasn't convenient for him to take them out earlier.)  I assume that means he walks/relieves them twice a day, before it gets "humid," and after it's not so "humid" any more.  This is the life he, or anyone, thinks dogs want?  Never mind that they get spayed/neutered, "docked," and whatever else people want to do to them.  And sent to "obedience school."  They have to be "trained" to be obedient to whom?  Why?  Large dogs, bred for the life of Siberia (isn't that that place people always say is so cold?), kept in Miami (isn't that that place people always say is so hot?), and cooped up inside all day.  (He also told me-- he told me, like he heard it said!-- that people think these dogs, these Siberian huskies, are supposed to be outside.  Wrong, he said.)  Raise your hand if you allow yourself to urinate twice a day, early in the morning, and after dinner time.  No?  And his parting explanation to me was "It's like with any dog: it depends how you train them."  If you can "train" a large and thick-coated dog to stay inside in a hot environment all day, and urinate twice a day, then it must be OK.  Like if you can "train" a slave to work in the fields all day, and not to run away, then it must be OK. 

Is there anyone who hates animals more than a pet owner?  Dogs, cats, birds, fish, or whatever.  It's a terribly cruel way to treat animals.  PETA and MFA should know that better than I do.