Now is exactly the time to care about ethical dog guardianship
A few weeks ago, I had a short yet unpleasant interaction with another R+ trainer when they posted about how putting energy into certain welfare related discussions (ie, risks of playing fetch) is a waste of time because we should be focused on dismantling the government.
Commenting on how we can and should care about multiple types of welfare at a time, and seeking to reduce harm wherever possible, only got me a response about how I was giving “all lives matter”. (I firmly believe that Black lives matter.)
Listen. Caring for those around you, in big and small ways, has always been important. But now maybe more than ever, while fascism secures its grip on the United States government and people fall into line the way they never understood could happen in Nazi Germany, as people are ripped from their families and disappeared into foreign prison camps, as children are systematically starved and bombed and crushed under rubble, “care about this and not that” arguments are completely missing the point.
It’s all connected. And yes, we can and should care about all of it.
First of all, who decides where that line is drawn? If we exclude “fetch” from the list of approved dog topics, what about advocacy for other risk prevention measures like non-slip flooring or pain management or nutrition or even shock collars? Does talking about positive reinforcement training make the cut? What about how most dogs enter the shelter system for economic reasons and how helping people is actually the best way to help dogs? I spend my work days helping people identify and navigate their dog’s underlying pain – is that a worthy cause? I suspect the line ends up wherever people become personally uncomfortable. When people get uncomfortable about not understanding things, seeds for conflict are sown.
Secondly, no one is actually going to create meaningful change in the world without acknowledging intersectionality. The things we care about are never islands. What we’re exposed to on social media and in our communities drenches our subconscious thought. Alt-right pipelines are insidious. We need metacognition (thinking about why we’re thinking about things) in order to avoid falling into them.
Fascistic thinking is just a hop-skip-jump away from the wellness industry, trad wives, home schooling, biohacking, raw milk, anti-vaccines, etc. Ideas are dripped into us about how to distrust the government and regulatory bodies, how to isolate ourselves from communities, how being disabled is a moral failing, how to bootstraps your way to being successful in order to best serve your country… essentially modern day eugenics. I’m not the right person to learn about this stuff from so I hope you’ll stay curious and seek out other sources.
There is a “functional breeding” movement that posits we can breed our way out of the animal sheltering crisis by “producing” dogs that are physically and behaviorally sound. Quoting directly from the Functional Breeding Instagram: “Shelters and rescues struggle to place dogs when they are not healthy. These dogs can linger and take up resources”. Juxtapose that with a quote from Mehmet “Doctor” Oz, who is actually no joke the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, preaching that “it is the patriotic duty of all Americans to take care of themselves because it’s important for serving in the military, but it’s also important because healthy people don’t consume healthcare resources”. This is a man who (along with the rest of this administration) does not believe in universal healthcare or any other measurably successful means of actually increasing public health. Get healthy or die. This is eugenics.
Intersectionality means that this is all connected. Talking about homeless dogs like they are burdensome and discardable is normalization of the same rhetoric used about people. It leads us to the conclusion that certain populations are not deserving of the time, energy, and effort it takes to care for them. That’s fucked up.
I firmly believe that the way we live with our dogs should reflect the way we want to live within our communities. That’s one reason I love what I do so much; honing in on what, why, and how I want to relate to dogs and the people who love them is a microcosm of my personal ethics. Proponents of positive reinforcement dog training will happily talk about how learning is ubiquitous across species; no one needs punishment to learn. Underlying health and discomfort issues will have enormous impacts on anyone’s behavior. We all benefit from harm reduction and nonviolent communication. Everything that makes me a better dog pro makes me a better person.
Of course whether or not you agree that playing fetch puts dogs at unnecessary risk for injury and stress has no immediate consequence to anyone else. But something larger does happen when you say, “I’ve been playing fetch with my dogs for decades and they’ve all been fine”. And something else happens when you say, “This is new information to me, and it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, but I’m ready to sit with that and come away with a new perspective”.
So now is exactly the time for us to care, emphatically, about humane ethical dog training and guardianship. Not only is it not taking anyone’s attention away from politics and the other horrors (because we are capable of carrying multiple thoughts at once and it’s honestly insulting to suggest otherwise), it allows us to put our beliefs into practice. I believe that everyone, regardless of species, is entitled to have their needs met as an act of love. Taking fetch out of a dog’s life and replacing it with something less risky and more fulfilling is one way I can express that love. And the next time I learn something new that challenges me, I’ll process it, and do my best to reduce harm wherever I can. All the while chanting Free Palestine and wheatpasting posters about trans rights and tossing my dogs treats as I walk them on 20ft leashes.
