Dogs Are Not Human

When I took driver-training classes years ago, the standard instruction was “Do Not Swerve for Animals.” If a dog dashes out in the road and you can’t safely slow down to avoid it, keep going do not swerve. The rationale was that your life and the lives of your passengers were more important than that of a dog. It made sense then, and it makes sense now; but attitudes have changed. Is that still the case?

This insurance website reassured me that it is. This report from Washington State last August reinforces its validity: “Multiple-vehicle crash triggered by a dog in the road.” A motorist stopped for the dog resulting in four vehicles colliding and one woman being sent to the hospital. (The Chicago Tribune gave the same advice about deer in November.)

The reason to question it comes from recent articles like this one on December 10: “Man dies after trying to rescue dog from icy pond, fire officials say.” He fell though the ice, but his stranded dog later walked away. What was he thinking? Whatever it was, he was not alone. Look up “Man, Dog, Ice” to find numerous YouTube videos of men saving dogs in icy ponds. This story is typical. “The dog’s owner went out in a kayak to rescue his dog after the pet became trapped.” The kayak flipped, the man fell in the water and was taken to the hospital.

What’s worse is that firefighters and police who risk their own lives to save pets are hailed as heroes, rather than as people who have lost perspective. It’s fine when everything works out, but what of the family of such a “hero” who dies trying to save a dog or cat?

Even worse are those who value the life of their pet over that of another human being. Back in 2014 I wrote about the problems facing officials when residents insist that they choose between their own pets and their neighbors in public tornado shelters. Why would that be a problem? Again, it’s a perspective issue. It’s about values. 

But that’s not all! In 2013 researchers asked 573 Americans to choose which they would save from certain death, a human or their dog. One percent chose the dog over a sibling, two percent over a grandparent, 16% over a distant cousin, and 26% over a foreigner. More than one-quarter valued the life of a dog over the life of a fellow human being.

Today many cities face a feral cat problem. The cats live in the wild, killing birds and small rodents. They can be aggressive. Their bites and scratches can transmit various diseases including rabies to humans or feline HIV, other infections, fleas and intestinal parasites to domestic cats. They also can create driving hazards. And they reproduce.

The proposed “compassionate solution to feline homelessness,” in many places is to trap them, vaccinate them, neuter them, and release them back into the streets. Homeless cats? Even advocates like petful.com and PETA recognize the need for euthanasia in these cases “out of compassion,…[rather than] causing them terror, pain, and a prolonged death by leaving them to struggle to survive on the streets.”

But at the thought of putting a pet to sleep many people, including these catch-and-release programs, get such a lump in their throats that they cannot condone it and will fight to prevent it. Some even argue that all life is sacred and it’s immoral to value one species above another. Tell that to someone battling bedbugs!

Finally, consider the Massachusetts mayor who took his terminally ill dog on a cross-country road trip, as if the dog had a bucket list. Wouldn’t the dog have been just as happy curled up at home? But CBS featured this as a feel-good story on the news. It didn’t make me feel good; it made me wonder whether the whole country had lost its collective mind!

The 1956 children’s novel Old Yeller told the story of a boy and his dog. In the end the dog was bitten by a rabid wolf, and the boy had to shoot it. (We all cried.) But the lesson was that to become an adult, the boy had to learn to make difficult decisions. Today, not enough Americans  have the perspective to consider some difficult decisions or the maturity to act on them.

It’s fine to pretend your dog (or cat) is part of the family, to miss it when it dies and to spend reasonable time and money on medical attention. But some “pet parents” need to get a grip and remember from time to time that dogs are not human.