Not sure how my post was interpreted, but I wasnt including cattle..

Actually frob use an argument I use constantly against vegans. Something like "if theyre in terrible conditions, lets giving them good conditions, I bet it will even rise the quality of the meat. I dont want them to suffer unnecessarily either, eating meat is not the direct cause of that". Its more worth a person protesting against a company abusing animals them another vegan washing his hands.

I mean, I dont love cattle or dogs all around the world, I love MY friggin pets. For the others just my respect.

The thing with pets is that its a really hypocrite situation ppl simply choose to ignore. We "love" them, but we dont give them much consideration. And we easy our minds with "better here them elsewhere". Our alienated view of whats a normal way to care for pets is what troubles me.

Caging birds, rabbits, mouses, etc. and pretend to be his friend...to me its inexcusable

Neutering/spaying is cruel? First time I am reading this. O dear deoxyribonucleic acid, what have you done? I like horse meat.

To OP: next time, capsaicin and dark chocolate combo, better death then a psycho bullet gun shot.

Just because they happier with us than in the streets or in a cage waiting to be sold doesnt make the whole thing right...

If my dog wants to live with me, then isn't that her choice?

Note: She isn't fenced in. She isn't kenneled or tied up at night. She has a dog door that she can come in and out of the house anytime she wants. She's 140 lbs and can hold her own against the coyote packs around here,. Any night she chooses, she could go live in the woods - it's just a few hundred feet away.

I have pets, Id die and kill for them

I wouldn't die for my pet. I'd die for my siblings/parents, but not my pet.

I wouldn't kill (humans) for them either. I'd certainly kill other animals to protect my dog.

Lets talk about the fact they eat totally tasteless food, while they can smell our food better than we can even taste it, its torture.

Yes, my dog eats that crap food when we can't get anything better... but luckily, for large portions of the year she's either eating frozen chicken legs/heads, or bone soup frozen as popsicles (which she loves).

And during winter, she gets to go on an all-meat diet on pure venison - lucky gal. We didn't get any venison last year. It's been three years since I had venison (I don't hunt). But every winter, she gets a month and a half to two months of raw venison from an uncle who does hunt. The uncle takes the human-edible meat for himself, and offers us the rest for our dog.

But yes, when she has to go back to her processed corn and fake flavored junk, the look of disgust she shoots my way is very saddening.

Do you know the only reason ppl shouldnt eat dogs food is because the quality control on those are lame?

I've never eaten dog, but I'd imagine it'd be way to stringy and not make very good meat. It'd probably be like eating a horse.

But, if there was a real serious long famine, I'd kill my dog to feed humans, for sure.

Lets talk about the fact they dont like to demonstrate suffering, its theyr weapon.

Tell my dog that. She whines when she's hurt, and then we fawn over her 140 lbs of adorablemess.

This comes specially obvious with tooth decay. With by the way, 99% of pet owners fails to take care of dogs teeth. (Which btw again, should be brush as much as ours)

The vast majority of our tooth decay is related to sugar. Some sugar-less human cultures have fantastic teeth, without brushing.

I don't feed my dog sugar - she has much better teeth than me. That doesn't mean she shouldn't ever have her teeth brushed, and you're right I neglect it more than I should, but your comparison to humans - despite entirely different diets - doesn't make sense to me.

Lets talk about the fact we dont have the slightest interest in taking care of them,

Speak for yourself - don't generalize to everyone else.

You keep saying "btw" and "the fact", but your facts are your own situation, and the situations you are familiar with. 90% of your "facts" don't relate to me or my dog.

which is why we take them to those pet shops, where we dont give a shit and cant know what the hell happens there.

My dog gets brushed daily (sometimes by me, but usually someone else) - she has a heavy coat, and sheds like crazy, so brushing her is important to reduce her overheating during summer, as well as preventing our kitchen flooring from looking like a carpet.
We don't get her fur shaved because her breed actually grows a summer coat (that increases ventilation) instead of a winter coat - instead we just brush her enough for her loose hair to come out.

We also regularly check her for ticks, because she lays in the grass alot.

today I give shower to my yorkshire myself,

Seriously, it's good you do that - I don't want to underplay the steps you've taken...

Every shower my dog has had has been from us - most often, from me personally. I get myself half soaked, and smelling like oatmeal-scented dog shampoo, giving her a shower.

I mean, you think the guys at the pet shop manage to clean so many dogs a day cause they skilled fast or cause they dont give a fuck?)

Well, I don't know about your local petshop. We do occasionally (once or twice a year) bring our dog into the vet because of her ears' yeast infections, or when her joints are hurting (seems to be weather related; currently she's fine), and we have them clip her nails while she's knocked out cold.

Yes, we trust our vet. They don't hold her long, and don't process many animals a day. Since they have a smaller region they cover, I'd imagine they pretty much know each of their regular dog patients by name. As well as the regular cats, horses, and other animals.

If we have any complaints, I'm sure the veterinarian would like to hear it, next time we see him - which, seeing that he goes to the same church as us, and sits in the row behind us, is pretty often.

Lets face it, most ppl dont even have the time to care.

Naw, you are generalizing your personal experience to everyone everywhere.

I'm not saying my dog lives a perfect life - I don't know any human who lives a perfect life. But she lives an extremely good one.

She does mostly what she wants, mostly when she wants, with only a few things off-limits. For example, despite having access to the kitchen, she isn't allowed to take anything off the counters. Such boundaries are actually psychologically good for dogs, and make them more relaxed. If dogs have no boundaries, they get anxious and confused and tense, because they think they are the alpha dog and become overly aggressive trying to lead and protect the "pack", because the pack (the humans) isn't leading the dog.
One example of a good boundary is that my dog isn't allowed into the living room. There's no gate, door, electrical system, or anything like that. She was just trained that she's not allowed in there, and that "invisible wall" actually helps put her at ease, because she knows she's not the pack leader.

Im not even going to talk about pets that are kept on cages like birds and mouses...

I'm not sure why you think it's acceptable for a flying animal with wings to not be able to stretch its wings and fly...

But anyway, my dog's "cage" is a freakin' folding fence I put in the kitchen, because at 140 lbs, nothing smaller would work well.
She's only put in the cage for a limited few minutes when guests are arriving/exiting the house. Once the guests are in the living room, the dog just doesn't come into the living room.

While in the "cage" (which has no ceiling, btw - it's literally like an open fence), she just lays down and either takes a short nap or sits patiently. No barking or anxious behavior. Being overly friendly, she does get too excited if a guest gets near it though.

Mostly, my dog sleeps half the night outside (according to her own whims) and half the night inside (according to her own whims), by going in and out as she pleases through a dog door.

Castrating is awfull, its like operating dogs vocal coords so they stop barfing (oh yeah, ppl really do that btw), but its necessary..cause the whole thing is fucked up. It would get worst without castration.

At night, my dog is often barking. She has taken it upon herself to inform the coyotes in the neighborhood that this territory belongs to us, and if they come too near, she chases them off - sometimes chasing them half a mile or so, so they get the message.

During the day, she has on a leash, so we can grab her if she gets too excited - but she's not tied up. At night, she's lease-free, just incase she decides to explore the nearby woods or chase off an animal, we don't want her lease getting caught in underbrush.

Oh, and I genuinely think cropping our dog's ears would help her ear infections and cause her less frustration, by helping prevent bacteria growth in her ear by letting in more air and light - that said, we didn't think it right to crop her ears, so decided against it.

Speaking of choices, whenever I get in my SUV to drive into town, my dog decides for herself whether she wants to come or not by walking up to the SUV and sitting down, which, if I don't veto her choice (because of needing the space in the vehicle for other purposes), I then lift her shaggy 140lb butt into the vehicle.

She's happy, and has a good life. I'll phrase it this way: 99% of the time, everything's perfect in her life. And with the 1% that's not, most of it is minor, and only a few things (her joints and her ears) are a real nuisance to her

She also happens to be spayed, so spayed does not automatically equal unhappy, and neither does unneutered automatically equal happy.

My previous dog was a neutered male (~90 lb), and his life was great too - especially once we moved to a more rural area where he could free range. He once traveled about 13 miles in a single day with us, as four different people (at various different times of the day) went for long walks and he delightedly chose to join each one. He also learned how to "knock" on my bedroom door by shoulder-checking the door, at 2AM every morning, to come take a nap on my bed with me. I really miss that - he only did that for several months before he died.

Of all three dogs I've had in my life, I think only the first wasn't incredibly happy - the first dog had immense health problems and three separate traumatic medical experiences, being the runt of her litter with actually some weird internal mutations. That was the only dog that shouldn't have been neutered, because when the surgeon cut into her, her internal organs weren't in the right place and he hit some arteries instead, that sprayed blood everywhere.

We still had some great experiences with her, but I question whether she was more despondent than happy. At the time, we just weren't experienced enough to know how to help her process her trauma. Now, if we had the exact same dog, I'd be confident she'd have lived a great life despite the trauma.

Not sure how my post was interpreted, but I wasnt including cattle..

Actually frob use an argument I use constantly against vegans. Something like "if theyre in terrible conditions,

Cows and chickens and pigs are in terrible terrible terrible conditions, for the vast majority of the food you buy at the grocery store or in restaurants. (speaking from a USA-centric viewpoint).

This even includes "organic" and "free-range" labeled meat products. The vast majority of those labels are a lie.

lets giving them good conditions, I bet it will even rise the quality of the meat.

It does dramatically improve the quality of the meat - at least for many cuts of the meat. I raise my own chickens (moved twice daily onto fresh grass), and let me phrase it like this:

I didn't like chicken - until I had real chicken. Depending on how it's prepared, I now either like it or don't. I personally prefer it grilled, and put in sandwiches with mayo and grilled peppers.
I didn't really like steak - until I had real steak.
I didn't like porkchops - I'm now addicted to porkchops. They're the best thing I've ever tasted - if the hog is treated right.

I did like bacon, ham, and hamburgers, and have not noticed a dramatic improvement in those.

But the best "hamburger" I've ever had was actually venison hamburgers (venison ground up with bacon fat). I personally think they put beef hamburgers to shame, but other family members disagree with me, greatly enjoying both but siding with the beef.

We're actually thinking of raising our own hogs now. We do have a supplier, though, and have an entire hog pre-butchered (hundreds of pounds of meat - mostly in porkchops ) arriving in a week or two.

I dont want them to suffer unnecessarily either, eating meat is not the direct cause of that".

You're right that eating meat isn't the cause. Mass production and cutting quality for the sake of profits is the cause (and indirectly, buying from mass-production contributes to sustaining the genuine animal abuse).

Its more worth a person protesting against a company abusing animals them another vegan washing his hands.

My sister went vegan for multiple months as a form of self-imposed ethics. Once we were able to source properly raised animals, as well as raise our own, she ate meat again. I thought she had a lot of integrity - she wasn't forcing her views on us, but simply denied herself things that she wanted to eat, because she (after researching it) realized the way they are raised in the USA is immoral.

Gradually, we came around to her view - or rather, we always had that view but were too lazy to make any changes until her example put the issue front-and-center for us - and as a family have switched over on almost everything.

Protesting but still buying doesn't accomplish anything.

The thing with pets is that its a really hypocrite situation ppl simply choose to ignore. We "love" them, but we dont give them much consideration

Again, that really depends on the person. My dog is given alot of consideration.

My dog choose to stay with us - no ropes or cages or fences; she choose to be near us when she wishes, or distance herself when she wishes. And more often then not, she wants to be close.

Caging birds, rabbits, mouses, etc. and pretend to be his friend...to me its inexcusable

I don't pretend to be my dog's friend - she is truly in our 'pack'. She has her place in it (below all the humans), and is happy with it.

She also genuinely cares about us - because, despite knowing she's at the bottom of the pack, she lays down and keeps guard when we're outside (for example, doing gardenwork), often waiting patiently (and concealed) for hours while keeping watch. It's part of her breed - she's bred for protecting (rather than herding) sheep. She simultaneously treats us as the sheep and the alpha dogs.

To sum up, 140 lbs and all, the whole forest open to her - she still decides that she likes it better here. I think it's the raw venison diet in the winter, and the nearly hundred frozen chicken heads she ate last year - maybe she tastes the difference too.

Point of order, horse meat is pretty good.

Point of order, horse meat is pretty good.

As is dog meat. Though the way it is "prepared" is somewhat atrocious, to say the least.
Then again, being killed and torn to pieces, not necessarily in that order, is no fun for any kind of living being, and the way this happens in nature is not precisely humane either.

If we do not kill, we will die.

Careful, lest you invoke the vegan spectre!

My sister went vegan...

Oh no. It's coming.

...she ate meat again

Phew. That was close.

There are other humane ways of preventing dogs and cats from breeding,

Such as?

[ edit... Never mind... was told the description is too disgusting, as under 16s maybe reading... ]

However with some few posts noting they observe no difference in happiness between neutered and non-neutered dogs, and knowing I don't keep dogs as pets myself and almost never had one (apart from a couple of years as a kid when i lived with my uncle)

So that means i'm in no position to argue with these posts, and i will have to back down.

Having said that, I saw a program on TV some years ago, and what I saw never left me. The program was one of the series in: Micheal Palin: Around the world in 80 days . He was somewhere maybe Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines or somewhere in south Asia. Dogs were held in queue to be castrated. And there were loud dog howls, agonizing howls that seem like dog trauma cries. They knew what was coming on them and it traumatized them. (which is the same way humans would feel if they are lined up to be castrated by some dictatorship government ). Brings me to my final thought on this: maybe, just maybe, the subsequent happiness indication in neutered dogs is them adapting by brute force to their new state, since they are brain-wired to always please their masters (pack leader, alpha dog... whatever you call it)

For me Its not that dog would or would not taste good, its the psychological aspect. Unlike sheep and goats, dogs and cats have a character, visible emotions, a face and are friends with humans. How can you bear to eat them???

I don't think sheep and goats, or cows for that matter, have less of a character or visible emotions than dogs or cats. Nor do they have any less of a right to exist. In fact, I really like cows, more than dogs or cats, they're some of the most friendly creatures (unless you piss them off, you really don't want to make a cow angry!). They're better than some humans. Alas, if I hadn't been raised in a culture that eats cows, and if their meat didn't taste so darn awesome, I would hit anyone talking about slaughtering one with a stick. But yeah, I eat them. I feel sorry for the cow every time, but I do it again every time.

As far as cats go, I'm rather seeing them as dumb, useless creatures compared to other animals. My bumblebees manage to open a door to enter their home (the door is there to keep the wax moth out). They have brains the size of... you cannot even call it "brain". Ganglion would be more appropriate. Still, they manage to open a door! That's a fucking awesome intellectual thing for such a small animal. How many cats know how to open a door? Have you ever had a ferret in your garden? Now those are really animals with a characer, and they're smart.

About your question on eating dogs, I've done it only once in Vietnam. It is "well known" that the Vietnamnese eat dogs, and they tried to pull my leg with "let's go eat dog tonight" every day for a week when I worked there. I didn't really mind trying (surely dog meat can't be worse than any other meat?) so after that week, I said "Sure, let's go. I'll pay". Turned out that the Vietnamnese eat dogs as much as people eat snails here. There's a few crazy ones who do, and everybody goes "Eeeeewwww...".

So anyway, now I wanted to try, and after a couple of days (they had a different excuse every day, one of them had his aunt die, just so he couldn't come... at least he said that) we actually went. It was really good, can't say otherwise.

Now of course, the whole thing with trapping the dog in a sack and clubbing it to death slowly is a bit of a different story. But that's true for any kind of animal handling they do. Animals rights are not very prevalent there.

As in, if you buy a couple of ducks on the market, and you use duck tape to bind their necks together (is that why it's called "duck tape"?) and throw them over your bicycle's steering rod. Still alive, of course, only live flesh is fresh flesh. What do you mean, they're sentient animals and hanging/choking them like this is cruel? Animals are things, you know. And I'll burn a smoke stick in the temple later to make everything good again.

If we do not kill, we will die.

Careful, lest you invoke the vegan spectre!

My sister went vegan...

Oh no. It's coming.

...she ate meat again

Phew. That was close.

:lol:

As I mentioned, it wasn't that she was ever opposed to eating meat, only opposed to how the animals are treated prior to butchering. Once we found good sources to buy from, as well as growing our own, she switched back.

Point of order, horse meat is pretty good.

Never tried it! I definitely wouldn't mind the experience, I just always heard it was too stringy and tough. Bison is good!