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Honestly, I’m being honest, you need to touch grass. Humans have domesticated animals and lived with them since time immemorial. I feel like you have just never experienced the companionship and pure unadulterated joy having a pet can bring you. Genuinely I haven’t ever seen such a strange take from someone regarding pets. Now I do agree some people ought not have pets, or they do get pets that are “too much” for them and they don’t realize it. But your argument is strange and goes against the whole of human history.

Also humans are top of the food chain purely bc we are endurance hunters (basically we can run longer than our prey and effectively tire them out long before we tire out ourselves).

Again, I feel like maybe closing your laptop and going out and speaking with normal people and maybe even petting a dog / cat / rabbit etc would do you some good. Look into health benefits of having animals, the benefits to children, etc, and maybe you’ll start to understand.

@PM_me_trebuchets @tributarium While domestication of several plant and animal species is clearly a "thing" when looking at human history (many of our most common crops are domesticated, for example), the shift from nominally seeing your pet as a partner (in, say, hunting, which is what dogs were originally domesticated for) to an object to be owned is *much* newer (and problematic IMO).

@PM_me_trebuchets @tributarium It's particulary problematic with pets because we see fit to *literally cut off their ability to reproduce*, among other things. People say pets are like family, but if you locked your child up in the house (for their safety, ofc) and neutered them without their consent, you would be thrown in jail for child endangerment.

All imma say to this is a dog is not and never will be and cannot physically be the same as a human being. You lost me with this right here. I’m not abusing my dog by having her fixed.

@PM_me_trebuchets But what gives you the right to decide if your pet is allowed to reproduce? And I'm not the one claiming pets are part of my family - pet owners are! So it makes sense to examine whether that actually holds up upon closer scrutiny.

Can you be normal for one second? Do you hear yourself speak? How far removed from reality are you?

@PM_me_trebuchets Also, if I were 'normal', I would have accepted the meat, dairy, and egg industries as 'normal' and not at all exploitative. That is, I would not be vegan. But I actually like to think about these things and question my assumptions, even if it's uncomfortable.

I agree with you that factory farms are abhorrent and need to be addressed. But me having a dog as a pet isn’t me abusing the aforementioned dog.

@PM_me_trebuchets I contend that the whole notion of ownership of animals (as sentient beings) is immoral, no matter how good the conditions. That's what I'm trying to get at here.

@PM_me_trebuchets That fundamentally isn't your decision to make though. You sterilize her for your convenience. Isn't that messed up? You chose to own her, so now you get to decide if and when she has puppies - that feels like a messed up construction to me at its most basic level. The choice only goes one way, which means that when owner's wishes and pet's wishes collide, the owner gets their way, no matter what the cost to the pet.