on dogs

I hear a lot of folks say lately that they don't like people but they love animals. One friend tells me she loves her animals because "they don't treat you like crap like people do." She tells me that she stayed up an entire night with her dachshund because he had a virus, and then admitted that she would not do the same thing for her kids. One of my teachers tells me that "animals are better than we are." The same teacher tells me that the marine who threw a puppy off a cliff in a youtube video should be killed. I didn't ask how he feels about puncturing the back of a mostly-born baby's skull and suctioning its brain out. Perhaps I'm cynical, but I think I know the answer to that one.

(By the way, I think the marine should be severly punished, too, but I wouldn't go as far as killing him. I think caning might be appropriate.)

I think Lewis says somewhere that a dog can be neither very good nor very bad (morally speaking). Dogs can be wonderful companions, as was the case of the german shepherd my family used to have. Dogs can also be very violent and dangerous (as in this case and this one). But whether they are friendly or vicious, dogs are incapable of being either good or bad in the way that humans can be. A jack russel might rescue a woman from freezing, but the same dog would not spend years of its life working for the emancipation of slaves, or give up its dream of becoming an accomplished musician in order to ensure that his daughter grows up with a caring father. A pit bull might attack a man on a morning walk, but the same pit bull is not capable of conceiving and carrying out a plan to exterminate an entire ethnic group, or of falsely accusing a coworker of sexual harrassment in order to get even with her over a personal offense.

The difference is not in degree only, but also in kind. An emotionally abusive husband might be a hero in an emergency situation. A cruel woman might spring into action to save a drowning man she has never met. The same is true for dogs. But heroics brought on by instinct are not the same as the kind of patient, all-suffering good of which humans are capable, and violent acts brought on by natural tendencies and traumatic external stimuli are not the same as the conniving of an ambitious, backstabbing coworker.

I think people who feel the way my friend and my teacher feel simply don't want to bother with the effort of loving other people. They prefer animals because with animals there's no risk. But it is a terrible loss to throw out the good that people do because we cannot forgive the bad. Most people to whom I have been close have offended me or wronged me in some way (some more grievously than others), and I have done the same to them. I would have no one if I chose not to forgive others' wrongs, and certainly no one would have anything to do with me if people were incapable of forgiving mine. And what an impoverished life we would live if that were the case.