Most children love pets. From dogs to cats to parrots to hamsters, many kids beg their parents every year to buy them some kind of a pet. After buying a pet, parents and children tend to take care of the new addition to the family as if they were taking care of themselves. They give these new family members food, water, toys to play with and as much comfort as they possibly can.

After a while, however, rules are imposed on the pets. A dog is given a time out, and a dog is yelled at. A dog is pushed away when it tries to play with people, and a dog is ignored when it cries for more food. Behavior that was allowed in the beginning slowly becomes a forbidden act for the new dog. It’s as if it was assumed that the pet would listen to everything obediently and since it doesn’t, it now must be taught a lesson. One calls a dog “my baby” while one is happy, yet one locks the same dog outside in the patio when one is upset. People slowly assume that the dog must be aware that it was bought at a price, and that it must always obey its owner.

Feelings for a dog are usually dependant on how good the dog is when it comes to following the rules of the house. People act as if the dog signed a contract in the beginning stating that the dog will surely adapt to and learn new tricks and rules set forth by the human masters. Thus, many people think that they supposedly have every reason to get upset when a pet doesn’t live up to the promises in that imaginary signed contract. The dog becomes a kind of a property, and it’s automatically known that all properties must always be under the control of their owners.

Pet owners who yell at their pets repeatedly should think about the reasons why they are yelling, instead of what a dog or a cat has done to deserve such a yelling. People do not have the courage to tell other people that they are upset, but they do have the courage to yell at a creature that cannot express itself well enough to a human being. People tend to love others who may hurt them, yet they seem to vent their anger on a pet who is almost always happy to be around their masters. Take the case of a young child who always wets his/her bed and cannot control it. We label such a situation as being a result of a biological issue within the body of that child. However, if a pet does the same thing, we get upset and always resort to coming up with punishment for the pet.

Pets do not speak our language, and they cannot express their feelings all the time. How can one feel comfortable yelling at something that cannot even respond back in retaliation? Imagine what would happen if the dog was able to talk back; one would get upset even more as then the dog would be considered “talking back” at the masters. It’s like a person being frustrated at someone who is too weak to do anything, and that frustrated person feels confident, brave and happy about it, regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong. This sick trend of getting an indirect pleasure in controlling a pet does not make one a responsible owner of a pet; it only shows that one got a pet simply to vent off.

Buying a pet does not mean we can control the life of that pet completely. One dog may be better off in a house than in the streets, while another may be a captive in a house and would be better off in the open. We have to make sure that a pet feels respected at home, since it’s also a living thing like ourselves. Next time we think of buying a pet, let’s try to think of what one can expect from that pet realistically, instead of the hypothetical and unrealistically optimistic goal of “I’ll teach it a lot of things to obey things and be part of the house”, which rarely happens, and when it does, it only happens because of patience on the side of the owner who slowly realizes how the pet lives a life and how a pet understands things. And next time, let’s not call our pet “a baby“, as a decent person would never dangle a baby by its neck before locking it out in the patio as a punishment.

What do you think about this topic? If you own a pet, what are your views and thoughts on this? If you are a pet, what are your views and thoughts on this?