Animals

I teased it on my podcast last week and so here is the first section of my non-fiction book. It's all about animals and personally I feel it could be much longer. Some sections are going to be way longer than others. The sections on education and on religion are HUGE. Like that text. Anyway, here's the first section of my non-fiction book that is part collection of blog posts/part memoirs/all awesome.
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As I’m trying to keep this in alphabetical order I can’t think of a better place to start than the letter A. A is of course for animals. I have a huge love of animals and especially those of the cute and fluffy variety. I think I’m possibly most known for my love of cats. They’re small, cute, and independent. I see people use their independence as a knock against them but to me it’s a plus. Dogs are loyal, and that’s to be appreciated, but I do like the independent thoughts of cats. They’re more like roommates than pets. Except roommates that don’t pay their share of the rent and just eat all the food they expect you to give them. So I suppose really they are just like regular roommates after all. You don’t own a cat, it chooses to live with you. My one great ambition in life is to actually be a crazy cat man. If no one has heard of crazy cat men then they will by the time I am finished.

Of course, despite my love of cats, my favourite animal is actually a variety of dog. That is the wolf. Or if a wolf isn’t available I’ll take a husky. My true favourite animals are mythical creatures such as dragons and phoenixes. I can’t decide between the two so don’t ask me to.

One subject that comes up often with dogs is the subject of banning particular dog breeds, especially those with a penchant towards violence such as bulldogs and boxer dogs. A friend asked me if I think that some breeds of dogs should be banned. While I do get that there are some dogs that seem to be bred for fighting and violence, I don't think it's the dog's fault. I don’t think dogs should be punished for something like this. You don’t punish a child who came from bad parenting. Well, you do I guess, but you also lay blame upon the parent for not teaching them better. For the most part, nearly all animals can be domesticated; they can be taught that certain humans are important to them and shouldn't be harmed. There may be dogs, and other animals, with a predisposition towards violence, but I think they can still be taught not to be like that. I accept, to a degree, that it's very tough to fix a mentally damaged dog. It's very tough to break the programming that a bad person will ingrain in to them. I still think however that it can be done. If someone goes to a cult, and gets out, you don't just put them down because you can't reverse the indoctrination; you try and do it anyway because they are a human, and human life is sacred. You try and save them from what happened to them. With a dog, you can just put it down because it's not like it's a human. I can accept this to a certain degree. I was there when my dad drowned one of my hamsters because the poor thing’s leg was broken. You can really perform surgery on a hamster or correct it so it heals on its own the right way. Hamsters are tiny little things with fluffy faces. The ordeal still traumatised me to though. Now I'm older I can appreciate how tough it must have been for my dad too. I really could never hurt an animal. I would say “unless it’s tasty” but now I’ve switched to vegetarianism I can’t really say that either. Don’t get me wrong though; I’m not some kind of major animal rights activist. I want cruelty to animals to stop and I want more to be done to save them, but I’m not about to demand the whole world follow me on the path of vegetarianism. Humans are omnivores and are designed for eating both flora and fauna. I didn’t even become a vegetarian out of love for animals. I did it to try and lead a healthier lifestyle. It didn’t really work very well I’m afraid.

While that was mostly about when it's too late to "save" the animals you can still stop them from growing up like that and becoming violent. Even a really tough and angry breed of dog can be a kitten in the right hands. Alsatians, or German Shephards as they’re also known, can be taught to lick the hand of a child, but bite off the hand of an intruder. Police dogs are usually quite soft with their handlers despite their behaviour towards the criminals they’re put against. Outside of that environment a police dog can be very soft. Should we say people can't have German Shepherds because they have this predisposition towards violence? No. The police raise them very well, and they get good results.

I really don't think you should ban certain kinds of breeds of dogs and instead you should ban the people who breed them for fighting from owning them. The sort of people who breed them just to have them and scare people shouldn’t be allowed to have them. People who abuse animals have the right to own a pet taken from them. Why doesn’t messing with their heads and failing to train them count as animal abuse?

For those of you who are old enough, or nerdy enough, to remember, it's kind of like the episode of Pokémon where the Pokémon end up on an island and Ash's Pokémon actually cooperate and become friends with the Pokémon of Team Rocket. They say in that episode that there’s no such thing as a bad Pokémon, only a bad trainer and I really believe the same applies to animals. I also may have lost any and all credibility I had by referencing Pokémon but that’s neither here nor there.

The friend who originally asked me what I thought about banning dog breeds told me  I have good points, but doesn't really know how to feel about it. She's not as big an animal person as me though except for when it comes to cats.

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As always I need opinions and feedback.