Companion Animals Quotes

“People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices”
― Gary L. Francione

“There is a tendency to oversimplify the issue of spay/neuter and to promote the essential benefits without recognizing that our animals do suffer some harm, even if it is only the harm of deprivation—the harm of having their sexual and reproductive experiences stolen from them. It is possible to take this argument to the extreme and assert that we should never interfere with something as basic as sexuality and reproduction. Good stewards would allow their animals to exist in a “natural” state. The problem here is that our companion animals have no “natural” state; as domesticates, they are artifacts of human manipulation, and human control over the processes of reproduction is at the heart of domestication. As Karla Armbruster notes in her essay “Into the Wild,” we cannot simply hand control for reproduction back to our companion animals; this would be an abrogation of our responsibility to them. But we owe it to them to acknowledge their losses.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“I know that market value is a repulsive accounting of somebody’s worth, and many of us would be unable to put a monetary value on the worth of our animal companions, but the pet industry is willing and able. And animals are cheap. Lee Edwards Benning’s 1976 book The Pet Profiteers called out the industry, and consumers, for what could only be viewed as irresponsible buying habits. We are impetuous and unknowledgeable and spend more time choosing a pair of shoes than a pet. The reason for this may be quite straightforward: we can afford to be impetuous because animals are cheap. We choose our shoes more carefully because they are considerably more expensive.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Massive round-ups of strays have been replaced by daily intake and elimination, the large crate full of dead dogs replaced by a steady trickle of bodies. Euthanasia has become assembly-line work, performed by an army of euthanasia technicians and animal control officers. The mass killing of animals is no longer a public spectacle as it was that day in 1877 along the banks of the East River. It is all but invisible to pet owners, who therefore don’t have to feel discomfort or moral outrage. The slow bleed of our shelter system is one of the saddest aspects of our pet obsession.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“I’m focusing here on dogs because this is where almost all of the research and exposés lead us. But of course puppies aren’t the only pet animal being bred and brokered and sold for profit; they are just the most high profile. There are kitten mills, too. And rabbit mills. And the many other animals who we keep as pets—the rats, hamsters, and geckos—don’t just materialize out of thin air; they come from a mother somewhere, who has been intentionally bred so that humans can make a profit selling her babies (see chaps. 38, “Cradle to Grave,” and 39, “A Living Industry”).”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“A common misconception is that pets have easy lives. They don’t have to do any work to find food and shelter or to protect themselves from harm. But making life easy for captive animals doesn’t do them the great favor we might imagine. Providing them with appropriate challenges affords them opportunities to put their functional competencies to work, to engage in their full range of behaviors, and to engage their intelligence.1 And, in fact, various studies show that animals like to work and will engage in work for a reward, even if the reward is otherwise available for free. “Agency” has recently entered the vocabulary of animal welfare science and captures an important element of what animals in captivity need.”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“Animals are not genderless objects. “He” and “she” are vast improvements over “it.” “Who” is more fitting than “that” or “which.” (So, it isn’t what you are buying at the pet store, but who you are buying.)”
― Jessica Pierce, Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets

“In addition to selecting for infantile physical features in many of our pet breeds, we have carefully cultivated an infant-like dependency in many of them. Excessive demonstrations of affection have turned our dogs into eternal children, hyperdomesticated, docile, and servile to the extreme.”
― Charles Danten, Un vétérinaire en colère - Essai sur la condition animale

“Pet owners like to think of themselves as the parents of their animals, but they overlook the fact that the ‘children’ they claim are not their own. They are rather ‘children’ that were abducted from their natural communities.”
― Charles Danten, Un vétérinaire en colère - Essai sur la condition animale

“The perceived value of pets has been grossly exaggerated to stimulate demand and to create jobs and wealth. Although scarce for lack of public funding, the only decent research in the field has shown that the long-term benefits of pets are largely overrated, if not totally absent. The therapeutic value of zootherapy is of the same nature as that of gambling, binge-eating, and alcohol: it provides a transient, feel-good experience, but at a high cost to all involved.”
― Charles Danten, Un vétérinaire en colère - Essai sur la condition animale

“I can't drive past a farm without dreaming of having my own cow. My own goat, my own pig. If not a horse, maybe a pony or a donkey. In any case, though I've had several pets, I count not having had more animals in my life among my biggest regrets.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Vulnerables