Help Them Don't Hate Them

     There are some people who can’t stand the sight of stray animals.  These people will kick, shoo or scare a stray even if the stray animal itself has done nothing to provoke them.  I have witnessed people purposely wake up a stray dog curled up in a corner on the street just for the sake of disturbing him.  I have seen people start yelling, kick or throw things at a stray dog as he, minding his own business; unknowingly passes near. Of course, I have to mention the anonymous people responsible for countless stray dog poisonings. What is going on inside of them that they would make a deadly concoction and feed it to an unsuspecting dog?    

     I can understand someone exhibiting a fear response in the case of an unprovoked dog attack; but this is not what I am talking about.  I am talking about certain people who just can’t stand the existence of stray dogs and who are seemingly satisfied when they see the dogs suffer. It does not matter to these people that the strays, are strays, through no fault of ther own. Living among us, stray dogs are forced to share the streets and sidewalks with us and are at our mercy. Are these people born cruel or is their behaviour the result of their environment, a negative passed experience?    I ask myself these questions and reason that even if this person has had some sort of negative experience or has been in an environment that has encouraged him to show hateful behaviour towards strays he himself has not been able to reason his way out of this illogical behaviour.  This person seems stuck in some sort of place where he generalizes a personal negative view towards all strays and if this is so, how can he be helped to get unstuck?  If he can get stuck on this kind of issue, where else is he stuck in other aspects of his life?  How is this different from other kinds of illogical hateful behaviours?  If this negative behaviour was expressed towards a Black, Asian or Hispanic person we would call it racism and in the case of poisoning, murder.  Am I going too far?  Personally, I don’t think so.

      Dogs and other non-human animals are easily used, abused, exploited, abandoned, destroyed and generally not afforded the protection that a living being should be morally given, based on the simple fact that he or she is alive and sentient. However, when we see other animals as our possessions it places them below us, making them our property. We fail to recognize that the only valuable thing other creatures truly have is their very existence, their lives. I am sure we would all agree that an animal’s life matters to at least him/her, just as our individual lives matter to each of us.  If therefore an animal’s life has inherent value why do we assume the right to do with them as we please?  As our human population continues to grow at unstoppable rates on a planet that we share with millions of other nonhumans we, (humans) have to evolve beyond ourselves towards a place of acceptance and respect towards other creatures. We need to recognize the type of negative perceptions and behaviours mentioned above as being immoral and unacceptable. These hateful behaviours are a negative reflection of us. Perhaps when we can recognize the wrongfulness we will be able to live in greater peace with ourselves. 

I encourage everyone to read the following - 
"Can Human's Learn From Animals How to be Less Violent." http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2014/03/can-humans-learn-from-animals-how-to-be-less-violent/?cmpid=htx
  and
http://andyrossagency.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/jeffrey-moussaieff-masson-on-what-animals-teach-us-about-human-evil/ 

Thank you,

K.K.