As pet owners and animal lovers, we often feel a deep connection with our furry companions that we can’t express in words.
They comfort us, entertain us, and keep us company. But have you ever stopped to think if it’s ethical to own a pet?
Animal experts believe that the answer is no.
The Guardian is reporting that there is a growing number of animal lovers and experts who are now believing that pet ownership should be stopped.
Jessica Pierce who is a bioethicist told The Guardian that our beloved pets are becoming “much more intensively captive than they have been in the past”.
Her arguments, while hurtful to great pet parents, ring some truth as Australian cats need to be kept indoors as they are known killers of native wildlife and our dogs are being kept on leads while out on their walkies.
But don’t our dogs always look like they’re having the time of their life every time we take them for their W.A.L.K?
Pierce believes that dogs have “less and less freedom to move around the world and be dogs”.
“Dogs and cats are more and more treated like objects, products, a substrate, not like beings,” Pierce insists.
So is there any way that humans could house their pets ethically? There’s no clear-cut answer because Pierce believes that “There’s no such thing as perfect … but we can do our best and do pretty well.”
Pet owners can do their best by working harder at adapting to their pet’s needs, for example, “Let it be a house full of dogs, with beds that smell like the dog, because that’s going to be comfortable for the dog. Toys lying around, hair on the couch, muddy footprints.”
Adopting animals from shelters instead of buying from breeders is another obvious step, but maybe humans need to re-evaluate our relationship with animals as we all know “they have emotions and thoughts, because that’s one of the ways that we find them wonderful companions,” said Pierce. “But at the same time, we fail to see them for who they are. We see them for who we think they are, who we want them to be.”
