Its okay if your pet dies but its scary if my child dies mentality

[Sherlocks]

8 hours ago, Josie P said:

I do think evolution makes us naturally more vested in our own species surviving than others. If we don't actively try to keep each other alive, no other species is gonna do it!

 

That being said, I do want to point out that guard dogs were bread for a reason and not all countries would kill a dog/other animal for protecting it's family. It does depend on the situation, but for the most part I don't believe dogs are put down unless they attack without reasonable cause. Evidence of the contrary could, of course, prove me wrong here, but I can't imagine people with guard dogs think their dog is going down if it hurts someone...

 

Well obviously that's the practical approach to it. However anyone can argue victimhood of a criminal offender. 

[Puck]

1 hour ago, Sherlocks said:

Well obviously that's the practical approach to it. However anyone can argue victimhood of a criminal offender. 

True but (and I'm focusing on the US as that is where I live) in order for a dog to be put down, negligence on the part of the owner must be proved, the dog must be unprovoked, and the person bitten can't be breaking the law or unreasonably careless. For what it's with, a good "beware of dog" sign gives some owners enough protection. Things like pior instances of the dog being violent can radically harm the case though.

 

Of course there are shitty defense lawyers and so forth that make some cases not work out in the way that at face value makes most sense.

 

 

Foe what it's worth I'm getting this from this site: http://doglaw.hugpug.com/doglaw_082.html

 

It gives examples of cases that were won and lost by dog owners.

 

Sorry, I know this post is a bit off topic of the thread, I just want to be sure we get the facts straight

[Cimmerian]

CBC and Snow made good points.

 

I just want to add that I don't run into people who try to harass people just because they value their pets. (And I've lived with a lot of pet-haters.)

Might some of them get made fun of? Yes, but not harassed the way you're describing. As someone who doesn't care for pets much, I think some people with pets are absolutely ridiculous because of how wrapped up they get in their pets. I'm not going to shame them for it, but I do think it can get weird and I am going to be annoyed at those who can't hold a conversation without mentioning their pets or who can't manage to be away from them for longer than 4 hours.

 

As for your example, if someone's saving a dog over a baby in a fire I'm going to question their reasoning because I'm not going to put an animal's life over a person's (and I think the idea that animals should have equivalent rights to humans is out-right absurd-- not the basic protections stuff), but ultimately it's not my problem unless I end up on the jury.

[m4rble]

Some people seem to act like the only pets people can have are cats and dogs. Not really maliciously, they just seem to have that base assumption and don't often think outside that framework. 

[Sherlocks]

13 hours ago, Josie P said:

True but (and I'm focusing on the US as that is where I live) in order for a dog to be put down, negligence on the part of the owner must be proved, the dog must be unprovoked, and the person bitten can't be breaking the law or unreasonably careless. For what it's with, a good "beware of dog" sign gives some owners enough protection. Things like pior instances of the dog being violent can radically harm the case though.

 

Of course there are shitty defense lawyers and so forth that make some cases not work out in the way that at face value makes most sense.

 

 

Foe what it's worth I'm getting this from this site: http://doglaw.hugpug.com/doglaw_082.html

 

It gives examples of cases that were won and lost by dog owners.

 

Sorry, I know this post is a bit off topic of the thread, I just want to be sure we get the facts straight

 

 

 

They have won cases where the animal wasn't at fault before. It should also be illegal to break into someone's house but you know suddenly its okay to break in if you hurt your leg at which point you can sue the home owner for making your burglerys unsafe. Which again has been won but you know people are idiots. 

 

Illegal: Breaking into house 

Legal: Breaking into someone's house and hurting your leg 

[fan fanackapan]

I think it is just ingrained in every species to protect their own species. We tend to think of ourselves as more important than other animals, but you approach the young of any animal and it will defend them to the death.

 

As for a dog savaging an intruder that was attacking somebody that wants to rape and murder an old lady, if I had my way, I'd happily feed him the intruder's damned remains!

[Epitaph]

Life is life. For a short moment, it exists, and maybe that short moment is the only moment it exists for. I try my best not to cause undue harm or suffering for any living thing I meet. Many animals may not share our cognitive abilities but many of them have rudimentary feelings as we do. Humans aren't different from the rest of the lifeforms on this planet, we share the same evolutionary origin. The one exception is our heightened perception of things beyond the simple black and white of nature in its base form.

 

It's just an old relic of an ignorant mentality from days gone by. European explorers held the same views on so many of the indigenous populations they encountered. A lot of people believe they're superior to other lifeforms because of thier cognitive abilities and their ability to create. And yet we're the ones polluting and destabilizing the environment, nearly an exact parallel of what explorers once did to native populations when they encountered them.

 

Hubris in the belief of superiority when the real picture is we're a slightly different assembly of interacting particles in a soup of other particles that one way or another will all turn to something less than dust in the end. 

 

 

[SorryNotSorry]

On March 5, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Danger Dove said:

 

you also had to walk to school uphill both ways through 10 feet of snow barefoot

 

 

And I had to eat dirt to survive.

[SorryNotSorry]

On March 6, 2017 at 6:36 PM, m4rble said:

Some people seem to act like the only pets people can have are cats and dogs. Not really maliciously, they just seem to have that base assumption and don't often think outside that framework. 

I'd love to have a sea urchin as a pet, but it has no face, so it can't look at me and make me wonder what it's thinking like a cat can.

[Hermit Advocate]

On 1/31/2018 at 5:54 PM, fan fanackapan said:

I think it is just ingrained in every species to protect their own species.

And yet we are so terrible to our own species. 

[(A) & A]

If I had to chose between saving my dog or a confessed serial killer, I'd chose my dog.  She's sweet and the serial killer has proven he has little respect for life.   However, if I had to chose between my dog and some random baby, I'd go with the baby.  I love my dog, but my dog isn't human.  Her life has value, but I don't think her life has the value of an innocent human life... And I will cry when she dies.

 

While humans have to potential to be awful to each other, we also genuinely put value of our lives above animals since we are human... We often dislike cruelty to animals, for various reasons, but most people are well aware that animals aren't human.  They aren't capable of thinking or feeling the way we do.  Again. that's not to say the lives of animals don't have value... But its the difference between silver and gold,

 

Don't get me wrong... I prefer the company of animals to most people.  I don't terribly enjoy human interaction, outside of a chosen few people and even then I need to get away from them sometimes but I don't believe that misanthropy is a positive character trait.  Hell, what separates us from animals is our ability to even debate this topic.  Animals surely don't.

[Nevyn]

True. Animals don't debate morality because they don't really need to. When animals kill each other its for reasons like food, territory or defense. The animals that kill for sport or other reasons are domesticated ones and ourselves. We play silly games like "who deserves to live more" and "rationalize away our superiority while we kill the whole planet".

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

I'm with you on that one @Nevyn!