Are pet owners animal lovers?

Recently, the Bangalore Bruhat Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) has proposed a new set of guidelines putting restrictions on the number and type of dogs that people can keep in their homes. As expected, this met with a lot of anger from the dog lovers of the city. People felt that the BBMP had no business telling them how many and what type of dogs they should or should not keep in their apartment or individual houses.

At a risk of appearing a non-lover of animals, I would like to state that I fully endorse BBMPs action. I have always thought that keeping a pet at home is not a demonstration of one’s love for the said pet animal, but a demonstration of how unbothered one is of the right of the animal to live its own life with creatures of its own kind!

Earlier, man used to keep animals as pets to get work done. The horse was used to pull a carriage, the cat kept the house free of rats and rodents, the bulls pulled the plough in the field, the dog was the protector of the home, a mongoose ensured that snakes do not come near and the list goes on. It was not just animals, people bought and sold other people to get work done. Just like animals, the less fortunate human being was traded. Such subjugation of the weak by the strong existed and never once considered unethical. Thanks to the American Civil War for awakening the sense of morality in people, leading to the abolishing of slavery. But, the use of the mute animal by the man to ease his labour continued. Animals have not been able to start a civil war asking for restoration of their freedom rights!

Technology is the only reason we see a marked decrease in the number of animals kept as pets by the average household. We have cars & tractors, pesticides & insecticides, rodent traps and burglar alarms, so we do not need the animal as much. So pets now are either for company or for show. And to my mind both these reasons are wrong. A bird is meant to fly high in the sky, not remain caged. How would it feel if one were to wear a collar all day chained to a pole? Horrible!

I have read some articles on the cruelty meted out to dogs by breeders. As each “pure breed” was being developed over time, the breeders decided which characteristics were “wanted” in a particular breed. For example long coat was chosen for Old English Sheepdogs, while short coat was chosen for Rottweilers. Pugs are to have flat faces and bulging eyes, for Bull Dogs the distance between nostrils and the base of the forehead should be very short. The “puppy factories” of the world are working full-time to create these “perfect pure breed” dogs to be sold as pets. This has led to inbreeding resulting in a lot of genetic disorders in dogs.

I have known a self-professed pet lover who bragged that she always had pets and she loved them like family members. But her free rabbit hopped into and drowned in the commode, her un-caged bird caught itself in the blades of the moving ceiling fan and bled to death, almost every day she would fish out the dead fish from her aquarium. While this might be a one-off example of the callousness with which people treat their beloved pets, we often hear of cases where people leave their dogs with some food and water for two days in a row, where the cat falls from the ceiling and breaks its leg.

Loving a pet like a family member is no excuse for keeping an animal confined within a human house. Many argue that there are many cases where an animal was freed but found its way back to the family had lived with. That way, even when slavery was abolished and slaves were freed, many came back to their owner, because they did not know how to go about getting food, clothing and shelter. They had lost their instinct to provide for themselves. But does this justify slavery? Likewise, a freed pet coming back to its owner does not justify keeping a pet and killing its instincts to provide for itself, taking away its joy in flocking with its kind and procreating as per its will.

Many also argue that animal lovers rescue strays and keep them as pets. But had this been true for every keeper of pets, an English bull dog would not have cost $11K. Rescuing a stray does not justify keeping an animal confined within a house. I can still understand keeping an animal to provide milk, pull the plough in a rural setting, or provide transport in the desert, or protection in an under-privileged economy. But I thoroughly denounce the practice of keeping pets for show or companionship!