A “Morally Odious” Vision

A growing number of academics (wrongly) argue that living with dogs and cats is unethical and they ought to either live on the streets or be sterilized out of existence

I recently wrote “Academia’s War on Animals,” an article challenging professors who sacrifice the health, safety, and rights of animals to Critical Race Theory, Critical Gender Theory, and anti-capitalist/Marxist ideologies (collectively, CRT). This includes calling for more animals to be killed in pounds so as not to promote “settler-colonial and racist dynamics of land allocation,” defunding the police and releasing all prisoners convicted of animal neglect and abuse, even in cases of torture and killing, because abusers are “victims,” criticizing the use of technology, like wheelchairs, to give disabled animals mobility, claiming it “erases” disabled people, and advocating for “pansexual” relations with animals — the rape of dogs, horses, and others — in the name of “queering the human-animal bond.”

You can read “Academia’s War on Animals” by clicking here.

But it isn’t just CRT proponents whose propensity for human misanthropy sacrifices a century of progress in animal protection. So-called “pet abolitionist” scholars do, too. Primarily, they argue that living with dogs and cats subjects them to a life of deprivation, dependence, and servitude and call for an end to it in one of two ways: by having them live on the streets or sterilizing them out of existence.

Village Dogs vs. Homed Dogs

University of California at Riverside Professor Katja Guenther is a proponent of the former. She envisions replacing cities with small village-like neighborhoods where dogs are no longer considered “private property.” Instead, these dogs have what she terms “intimacy without relatedness.” They can choose to come and go by running around as free-living dogs. Guenther’s thinking is part of a disturbing trend of scholars unduly romanticizing the past by appealing to “ancient wisdom” as better, more conducive to happiness, and more “natural.” In subservience to this golden age thinking, they argue that modernity undermines human and animal flourishing — a claim at odds with clear evidence of progress, at least as it relates to people, cats, and dogs.

In general, free-living or “village dogs” suffer from a “lack of sufficient and adequate food” and a “lack of veterinary care.” Consequently, puppy mortality is high (as much as 70%), and life expectancy is low (3-4 years, on average). This is not surprising. Many animals in the wild die prematurely and die violently. Indeed, “the overwhelming number of nonhuman animals [in the wild] die shortly after they come into existence. They starve or are eaten alive, which means their suffering vastly outweighs their happiness.”*

By contrast,

[T]he typical modern suburban or urban companion dog experiences good welfare in a number of respects. This is especially the case when it comes to security, satisfaction of nutritional needs (though companion dogs have problems with a high prevalence of obesity), and proper veterinary care.

Their average lifespan is north of 10 years.

Village dogs may be free to choose when and with whom to interact, but they are also chronically hungry, suffering from treatable conditions, and have a lifespan one-third that of homed dogs. Of course, we can do more to improve the lives of street dogs, including veterinary care, food, and other protection, but the most important thing we can do for them is find homes where they can join a loving family.

So, contrary to Guenther’s assumptions, “natural” is not better; it is objectively and demonstrably worse. There is no compelling reason why individual animal suffering that humans can cure is preferable to the extended lifespan and better health when humans provide a home. The idea that allowing avoidable suffering is somehow nobler and more “natural” contradicts our experiences and preferences as living beings and is incompatible with genuinely caring for dogs and cats.

Extinction

By contrast to Guenther and her ilk, other scholars argue that while we have a duty to care for dogs and cats already in our homes, we should not allow any more to be born by sterilizing both species out of existence. This is the thesis recently published by Dimitri Orestes Angelidis, a graduate student in philosophy. In On Pets: A Defense of Animal Abolitionism, Angelidis argues that living with dogs and cats is “morally odious” because they live a life of complete dependence that borders on “involuntary servitude,” akin to the prohibition of the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery. In his estimation, living in human homes makes these animals “things” or “property” rather than animals with inviolate rights.

Echoing others who subscribe to this point of view, Angelidis argues this is true “irrespective of how the nonhumans involved are treated.” In other words, even if they are well-cared for, they are still perpetually dependent and experiencing an“unnatural” existence and, therefore, are incapable of “flourishing” and having “joyful lives.”

With the belief that the “solution” to this suffering lies in their eventual extinction, these scholars not only preach that the lives of dogs and cats are dispensable, their deliberate elimination of no moral consequence, their disappearance from our planet no tragedy to mourn, they also embrace an agenda to which no other rights-based movement in history has ever subscribed: the deliberate elimination of those they claim to want to protect. And it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the origins and nature of the relationship.

They Adopted Us

In a shared community of social animals, varying degrees of dependency are ultimately inevitable and inescapable. To the extent that such relationships are based on mutual love and for mutual benefit, there is nothing inherently unethical about them. For example, when we decide to leash dogs near busy streets, our gifts of foresight and intellect protect them from dangers they may be incapable of perceiving. More importantly, the relationships are one-sided, with humans doing all the work. Every day, we feed them, walk them, give them a warm place to sleep, play with them, and care for their needs. The same is true, if not more so, with cats. In doing so, they have become the most successful mammals in the world, extending their lifespans and quality of life well beyond almost all other creatures. They have blanketed the world.

Not surprisingly, dogs and cats want to live with us, choose to live with us, and should live with us, given all the benefits humans bestow upon them. Through self-domestication, dogs and cats “have successfully adapted to us and our ways, seizing the opportunity that our planetary dominance presents, greatly increasing their numbers, and extending their range beyond what was possible in the absence of people.”

As these processes unfolded and humans learned to control our environment like no other species, the attention our accomplishments gained from less technologically-minded Earthlings was, according to Angelidis, a tragic turn of events rather than a beneficial one. Accordingly, when dogs and cats came to the edge of our villages and campsites and then chose to come in, our ancestors tens of thousands of years ago made a terrible mistake: rather than make room by the warm fire, they should have chased these animals away. They should have behaved in contravention of the principles that the animal protection movement is working to promote for every other species: tolerance and compassion.

Our ancestors should have been hostile rather than welcoming, selfish rather than generous, cruel rather than kind, each of those alternatives necessary to discourage animals who wanted to become more intimate or familiar with humans. Such an approach would not only have been unkind, it most certainly would have failed, as the agenda to move in was almost certainly theirs. And they were very determined to succeed.

The anthropological model from the historical record is not one of people forcing domestication of dogs and cats, but that “of an uninvited dinner guest that became a tolerated lodger, then a member of the family.” Moreover, mere utility — such as food and shelter — is not the only benefit dogs and cats enjoy from living with humans; there are also emotional rewards.

They Came for the Food & Warmth; They Stayed for the Love

Neuroscience proves that dogs experience love in the presence of humans the same way humans feel in the presence of dogs. “The ability to experience positive emotions, like love and attachment, would mean that dogs have a level of sentience comparable to that of a human child.” Not only do people who kiss dogs “have higher oxytocin concentrations,” the feel-good “love” hormone associated with bonding between people, but more importantly for our purposes, dogs do, too. One study concluded that the bonds are “similar to those that characterize human caregiver-infant relationships.”

“For dogs, humans seem to represent a social partner that, in addition to providing information pertinent to food acquisition, can be a source of emotional fulfillment and attachment.” In fact, dogs prefer the company of humans to other dogs, and similar results have been noted for cats. As such, while dogs and cats may have “adopted” humans early on to maximize survival, they have since come to love us.

As a species, we don’t have much choice as to whether we want relationships with them. The only choice is the kind of relationship we have. Assuming we could end “domestication” (and that we would want to), we could never end human-animal relationships. Those relationships would inevitably develop as animals continued to seek us out. How we respond to those overtures and opportunities is up to us. We can subvert our best and most compassionate instincts and scare them off based on a misguided view that says sharing our homes is inevitably “unjust.” Or we can obey our most noble impulses and open our doors, just as our ancestors did.

In the final analysis, those who argue against dogs and cats living with humans are the ones who thwart the will of dogs and cats and not the other way around. Because this much is certain: For the dogs contentedly sleeping on our beds and the cats curled up on our laps, claiming they don’t belong there and that they are incapable of joy is a position born of misanthropy, one that is blind to all the benefits humans bestow upon dogs and cats as well as the human potential for empathy, compassion, and morality. Long after we have ended the killing of animals for food, long after we’ve ended the commercial trade in sentient beings, long after we’ve rearranged society in countless other ways to better meet their needs, dogs and cats will continue to share our homes. And they will do so because, in the end, living with us is not only consistent with their rights, but offers them the best opportunities to flourish. And flourish, they do.

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* Study citations throughout have been omitted for readability but can be found in Welcome Home, my book exploring the relationship with the dogs and cats who share our homes.