Oh yeah, I noticed. The older ones had something going on with the tail too. It wasn't flat. It was kind of curled up at the tips. The younger ones didn't have this. Sad stuff.
As a feral animal myself I get it.
There was a baby orca (10' long) that was really playful. It reminded me of human kids before the indoctrination process. Eyes open, fins up. Lively and playful. The older ones just swim in circles for their fish.
some pets are really well taken care of. You should see conditions in the wild. And, some pets are abused by selfish owners. At the end of the day keeping a pet is about the owner right?
Humans and dogs have co-evolved for at least 32,000 years and therefore it makes little, if any, sense to relate human interaction with dogs to forcing huge sea mammals to spend their entire lives in tiny tanks.
Dogs would not even exist as a species had it not been for their interaction with humans.
To quote a scientific study "wolves that wouldn’t normally survive because they weren’t strong or aggressive enough were able to thrive as a result of their interactions with humans. This caused friendliness to become a new trait in ensuring survival, and one that in turn was selected genetically in wolves that lived with humans. In a remarkably short time the wolves even changed physically, with pointed ears turning into floppy ones, and tails that were mostly meant to signal danger now being used primarily to wag and show happiness and excitement. [...] it is theorized that domestication and evolution changed dogs not only physically, but mentally as they became more attuned to human mental states and more attentive to human behaviour and gestures in response to humans being the major providers of food."
I also read somewhere that human beings have already domesticated just about every species that is capable of being domesticated. Those that remain wild, or caged completely against will, have no innate tendencies that could be bred towards more tame behaviors.
I would also like to note that human beings who work in cubicles in order to pay bills are only caged by their own fear of social shame and physical suffering. There really isn't any such thing as a wage slave in a society that does not have debtor's prisons.
Eureka wrote:Humans and dogs have co-evolved for at least 32,000 years and therefore it makes little, if any, sense to relate human interaction with dogs to forcing huge sea mammals to spend their entire lives in tiny tanks.
For all but the past 100 of those 32,000 years the dogs and humans lived in situations where dogs could be dogs and humans, humans. Today we've got strollers for dogs. They are constantly leashed. They eat.... whatever that thing is we call dog food, which is designed to create firm little turds so that their owners can pick up the shit (except, apparently, Parisians) and carry it around in little baggies. Most dogs live inside, in remarkably small spaces when compared to their ancestors who could roam forever like Forest. At least the orcas eat fish. I could go on.
I'm pretty sure my dogs have domesticated me, not the other way around.
@Ego--When we visited Mt. Rushmore in June, we took that path that circles close to the monument. There was an older couple (70ish?) trying to push a stroller along the walk, but it's full of stairs and they were struggling carrying the stroller up and down the stairs. My son ran up to help them and then stepped back once he got a look in the stroller. I was ready to yell at him for being rude until I saw it was a miniature poodle.
Honestly, I kind of like the novelty of places like 6 flags, sea world, etc. I remember my (perhaps foolish) migrant parents took my brother & I over to Disney World many times when we were kids, and I ABSOLUTELY hated it haha; I would've much rather been playing video games back in our trailer park thank you very much. At least then I could feel like I was progressing in some way - leveling up and working on skills, so to speak.
Nowadays, I both enjoy working/doing things such as archery, home building, or cliff diving as much as I enjoy watching a pop movie (star Wars VII anyone?), purchasing a commercial massage, or going to places like fairs. The latter set of activities are admittedly more of a rare novelty where I get to interact with a larger subset of the population, and therefore entertaining in and of itself. As much as I think aquariums and zoos are other-animal prisons, it is cool to see different life before they go extinct! The aritstocrats of yesteryear have nothing on the novelty we can experience!
And yes, owning pets is essentially owning a little prisoner that must stay within walls, has a leash, is wholly dependent on you and cannot even talk, and is ultimately killed by the owner when it proves inconvenient. Yeah, pet ownership. ~
Last edited by TopHatFox on Sun Aug 14, 2016 7:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
ffj wrote: I've always gotten my dogs through the animal shelter and I think I treat them like dogs as they are supposed to be treated.
You rule! One of my moral high-horse/pet peeves is the industry of the unnecessary breeding of dogs and cats when there are plenty of them available for free. It only results in animal cruelty in puppy mills and euthanasia.
And I agree that animals prefer to be treated like animals, and are less neurotic if they are able to exercise their instincts. We (human beings) are lucky that dogs generally adapt to their humans.
jacob wrote:@Ego - You can adopt rats at Petsmart as well. Come on. You know you want one
One of my previous partners had 2 pet rats. They were cute and I got to pet them. (They were also a PITA to take care of like any other animal. Thankfully rats have a short life span).
Ego, your objection to dogs is a result of your environment. Dogs shouldn't live in apartments, but for that matter, should people?
I've addressed this in other threads, but seriously, life is better in the sticks. Better for people, better for dogs. Though my black lab seems to prefer the suburbs. Out here, she gets bored when we are at work. In the suburbs, she had deliveries, children, and a variety of neighborhood dogs for entertainment. Though getting old may be a factor, as well.
Rigger, humans can come and go as they please. Dogs can't. That's why I loved watching Forest run. I just spent 2 1/2 hours roaming around my territory by bicycle and then came home to our little cozy dog house.
Mrs. Ego has a friend who lives in the sticks and recently decided to move nearby into a small condo because she felt like your lab, lacking in mental stimulation. I agree that dogs shouldn't live in apartments. And I agree that your black lab and ffj's dogs seem to have the right amount of space.
But that's only part of my objection. From what I've seen, people are using their dogs as surrogates for human friends. When the time comes for them to deal with real live humans, they struggle to make the shift from (human - dog) mode to (human - human). Quite a few here in my building actually speak to one another in that high-pitched voice most of us normally reserve for cute toddlers. And more than a handful resemble jenny's poodle in a stroller example. It is a sickness.
Paul Harvey once said, "we treat our pets like children, and our children like pets."
And it is easy to do. Our pets are just better people than most children. My solution is, when next I have dogs, I'll have 3. Dogs are best in packs. And that is one of my motivations for ER. Can't take dogs to the office, even if they are better behaved than the children and grandchildren that make the rounds at the office, occasionally.
Maybe I will develop more difficulty dealing with people as I age, but I take much more pleasure in the company of dogs than people, in general, anyway. I could work on my people skills, but people don't seem worth the effort.
As for the space dogs need, at the small size, they don't need that much room. But dogs are social. And having a dog sit on your lap while you watch TV is not fulfilling your end of the bargain. Get a PARO. http://www.parorobots.com/
How long until we see the charity specializing in dogs displaced by robotics?
Sorry, I don't have much to say about captive pets but Going back to the idea of the OP and pleasurable experiences that aren't that satisfying, has anyone read David Foster Wallace's essay called "Shipping Out: The (nearly lethal) comforts of of a luxury cruise."? If not, you should. It's a long, but excellent and funny exploration of the idea. (Sorry, I can't get the link to paste but it's easy to find with a search.)
Dogs like me. There are a few unsocialized examples that don't, like the proverbial "woman's dog", though I've been known to recruit a few through bribery. Oh, it's so tempting to give way to a shaggy dog story...
Meanwhile, back to the thread topic... being an early retiree at the beach, I try to recruit visitors for beach campfires. It's surprisingly hard to get people to beachcomb, sit around a campfire, swig beverages, and roast a marshmallow or bratwurst.
The excuses that get tossed around are pretty lame, too: Sand gets in the food. Insects are out there. The water is so cold. We can't spare a day for the beach trip (but we're flying to San Diego and will visit Sea World next week). The parking lot is too far away.
According to Oxford: Pet -A domestic or tamed animal kept for companionship or pleasure.
That's why I say that I could make my living as a human emotional support animal, IF I was completely tame or domesticated. "Darling" is listed as an adjective for "pet", and my mother (chaotic/neutral-evil) once told me "Better an old man's darling, than a young man's slave." I try to be completely independent, but I think I must give off the same vibe as Benji, because people are always trying to lure me into their cars with treats, and then trap me in their houses. I am not even joking. I once had the experience that a man I was dating asked me to come over to his house, dress up in his old football jersey, sit up on a stool in his kitchen and then he fed me some homemade soup, and then he tucked me into bed to SLEEP! Two days ago, my quite affluent DBF told me that his very wealthy housemate who eats only fermented health concoctions himself had bought me a box of candy, and said "Give this to her. She will like this. She is spoiled." If I ride in the passenger seat of a car on a trip to Wal-Mart or the mall, I will get pretty much any treats or toys that I want. My teenage ex-step-daughter had very expensive hobbies like horse-back riding and scuba diving which her affluent parents would only partially indulge, so she became friends with a variety of wealthy older women who shared her hobbies and wanted a young companion. Since the same behavior is observed in affluent young people and how they relate to their animal pets, and affluent parents and how they relate to their children, and affluent old men and how they relate to me, and affluent crowds and how they relate to large sea creatures, all can simply be diagnosed as yet another symptom of affluenza. The only way to avoid it is to stay away from affluent people.
George the original one wrote:Meanwhile, back to the thread topic... being an early retiree at the beach, I try to recruit visitors for beach campfires. It's surprisingly hard to get people to beachcomb, sit around a campfire, swig beverages, and roast a marshmallow or bratwurst.
The excuses that get tossed around are pretty lame, too: Sand gets in the food. Insects are out there. The water is so cold. We can't spare a day for the beach trip (but we're flying to San Diego and will visit Sea World next week). The parking lot is too far away.
George, that is exactly what I am talking about. People are willing to forgo spending time with close friends around a campfire (creating connections, building community, developing social capital) in order to spend time with fifteen thousand strangers spectating at Sea World. One requires interaction. The other creates moments like the Shamu show or the various rides where engagement is encouraged at the expense of interaction.
Human beings are naturally compelled to seek out close connections with others. This compulsion (I believe) is being (poorly) satisfied by pets, permitting the pet owner to avoid real human connections with friends.
Real children are community engagement engines for their parents. They force parent to parent connections. Cooperation develops into friendship and social capital.
We childless or child free people have to be particularly aware of how much easier it is for us to disengage from community because we don't need it in the way parents need it.
