Sorry to all Orpheus blog readers, I know I haven't written for a while but there hasn't really been anything I felt strongly enough about to take my attention away from hearing about the start of the season. The weather hasn't helped much, all the snow we've had recently has been fun but hasn't given me much inspiration.
What has changed today is something that I overheard my retirement pack humans talking about. It seems that there is something on UK television Channel 4 that is called '4thought' which humans can use for telling other people about things that are important to them. The one that was on tonight was given by Professor Stein, who does experiments on animals to find cures for human diseases, and he was talking about his belief that animals don't have the same rights as humans.
A lot of people think that animal 'rights' are important, and that we should be treated like mini-humans. I want to look at this a bit more closely.
As I understand it, humans have a concept of 'rights' which defines how they can expect to be treated by other humans. If someone breaks the rules, there are ways that they can be punished. But these 'rights' are tied to another concept – 'obligations'. Sometimes a single 'right' can be tied to several 'obligations'. So if a human wants to have a right, they have to accept the obligation or obligations that are tied to it – for example, the human 'right' to have pets or livestock brings with it obligations around making sure they provide suitable shelter, food, access to water, vet's attention when needed, and protection from predators or disease.
As a hound, I can tell you that animals don't think about the world in the same way as humans. We don't understand 'obligations', we have only our instincts to tell us what we need at any time. To me, this means that animals cannot possibly have 'rights' in the same way as humans, purely because we don't interact with the world in the same way.
This doesn't mean that I would be happy if humans were to be mean to me, but they need to drop the idea of animal 'rights' and think more along the lines of animal 'welfare' obligations tied to the rights to have pets or livestock. In parallel, the right to keep livestock has an obligation tied to it to protect those animals from others that might harm them. Hounds were developed to help protect livestock from those predators.
Anti-hunting humans use the idea of animal rights to argue against using hounds for the role of protector that comes naturally to us. I agree with Professor Stein, we don't have rights in the same way as humans, but it is against our welfare to stop us from doing what comes naturally to us.
