Don't We Have More Important Things To Do?

UPDATE: Welcome Googlers. Check out the follow-up post before you flame this one.

Remember kids, if you want to advance your cause, personalize the subject and rev up your logical fallacies. Today’s example: they’re not dogs, they’re “Canine Americans”. No joke.

And animal-rights groups wonder why we don’t take them seriously. I’m not advocating random acts of brutality against dogs, cats, or rodents, but are we so confused about this issue that we have to anthropomorphize our pets?

I love my dog, he’s the closest I ever hope to having a child. But even I know that, at the end of the day, he’s a dog. Yes, he has feelings and emotions and desires, but he also has no opposable thumbs, would run away at the first chance you gave him, and would knock down a door to get peanut butter. I am responsible for that animal, but that doesn’t make him anything more than that, an animal. He has primal instincts and motivations that, with education, I have been able to use to train him.

However, he is not an “American” anymore than I’m an executive by virtue of sitting in a high-back chair. That identity is meaningless simply because it is based on convenient accoutrement of my present situation. If my dog is moved to Canada, does he lose his “American” rights? What about a country where it’s customary to eat dogs?

If my dog has any rights, he has the right to be happy and free from abuse, rights which are my duty to ensure. I am constantly disgusted by these moral bigots and busy-bodies who think they have the burden of telling me how awful I am for using certain words. I’m not a pet “owner”, I’m a pet “parent”. He’s not a dog, he’s a canine American. Oh, please.

We have laws to punish those who mistreat animals; enforce them. Instead of these idiotic agendas–which cost millions of dollars to create, market, and legislate–how about tossing some money to the people who are protecting animals? Animals are not people. I’ll say it again. Animals are not people. As much as I love my dog, I would save a person over him. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t miss him terribly. That doesn’t mean I hate dogs. And it doesn’t make me unworthy of being a pet “parent”. It means that I am able to distinguish between people and animals, something that groups like the Humane Society of the United States have apparently ceased to be able to do.