Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
pressive when thinking about highly populated countries, in which such animals
would turn into “pests” and would be treated accordingly. Cats and dogs get to lead
longer, safer, and more comfortable lives, and, while they lose through this exchange
too (loss of freedom, being subjected to various operative interventions), such losses
are offset by the benefits to them in the long run (limiting movement can prolong the
life of the pet since it diminishes the risks of accidents and injury from fighting oth-
er animals, a neutered animal lives longer). In other cases, such losses help preserve
the owner-pet relations as such (most owners would refuse to keep animals that can
freely reproduce), relations that are themselves an overall good for the pet. I claimed
that such welfare-based thinking can also generate welfare-based distinctions that can
tell us when pet abuse takes place and can guide some moral decision making within
small animal veterinary medicine. Some paternalistic, invasive owner actions are justi-
fied on welfare grounds because the overall good for companion animals trumps their
resistance to the action (e.g., vaccination). Other such actions are obviously immoral,
since they do not promote any animal interest and advance a marginal interest of the
owner (e.g., ear docking). Most other actions fall in the middle and should be as-
sessed in terms of the overall good for the animal and for the owner, and in terms
of available alternatives to the examined action. For some animals, turning them into
companion animals is not a benefit to them in any obvious way (wild animals and
birds), and so welfare considerations urge us to oppose attempts to keep such animals
as pets. Yet the same considerations suggest that the practice of keeping companion
animals is not objectionable as such: an ideal liberationist world will include owner-
pet relationships, and such relations, at their best, also show us that a paternalistic yet
nonexploitative human-animal relation is both possible and actual.
Can animal therapy be justified in a similar way? “Service” animals such as signal
and guide dogs easily fall into the owner-pet category, and so such practices are in
principle justified. Dogs do pay a price for such lives: they are spayed or neutered,
trained for long periods (in the case of guide dogs, much longer than other dogs),
and isolated from their kin. But dogs seem to be able to transfer their social needs
onto humans, and some of the prolonged training can arguably be an advantage,
providing important (and pleasurable) mental stimulation to these dogs. If humanity
were to endorse a hands-off approach with regard to animals, such dogs would appear
to lead qualitatively inferior (and probably shorter) lives in the wild, even in the few
countries in the world in which the notion of “the wild” still makes sense. Some
AAT programs strive to connect animal interests and human needs by placing shelter
animals with older people, thus benefiting particular animals in an even more immedi-
using electric shocks, teeth extracted—all of these prior to placing it as a nurse of a
