The Pet Wars

There is an unseen and unrecognized war taking place in every city of the world.

When I first learned to sew people up, one of my first victims was a man attacked by a kangaroo. The beast had opened his scrotum with one blow of its very sharp claws. The precious glands contained therein were undamaged, fortunately, but his jeans were a mess.

This was not a pet but the reason I am reminded of it was that recently a man was killed by a kangaroo that he was keeping as a pet. He was 77 and lived in Western Australia. My knowledge of kangaroos was very limited when I carried out this operation, but I was soon to learn from my experience in the bush that our national emblems could be savage and not to socialize with them however passive they may appear.

The definition of pet is domestic or tamed animal kept for companionship or pleasure.

Some animals are bred as pets, in the case of dogs over thousands of years while the lethal kangaroo that killed its owner was originally a wild animal. Whether wild or domesticated, animals remain unpredictable.

There is something very odd about the way we regard our pets. Marcel Proust, the great author said that we should never make the mistake of believing that people think with our minds. The same should be applied to pets.

We must be honest with ourselves. We have no idea what is going on in animal’s minds. We cannot predict what they will do.

 Over the years I have treated many injuries caused by pets. Recently Milton Keynes a four-year-old girl was killed by a family pet in the United Kingdom. In New South Wales more recently Mia Riley a baby, was torn apart by two rottweilers.  My most tragic personal experience was treating a six-year-old boy attacked by the family pet of his grandparents. He was to suffer permanent bladder injuries.

The article that was written about Milton noted that the dog responsible was put down “humanely”, I pondered why they made this particular point, but I think it is to do with the fact that we do not believe that our animals, however vicious their actions, are responsible in a legal sense.  I have also treated many people attacked in the street or even in their yard by someone else’s dog.

You may not be aware of it but there is a constant conflict raging in our society every day that we could describe as The Pet Wars, and it involves most of us at one time or another as we rail at the roosters someone has installed in a yard up the road and clasp our ears at the dog barking endlessly next door or when we throw slippers at the cat urinating on our verandah.  Someone’s dog snaps at us on the leash as we pass, and someone did not pick up the excrement on our favourite walk.

 This is mostly irritating, and we don’t do much about it but there are some people who feel driven to physical violence. One example was an elderly veteran dying of cancer whose prize poodle was torn apart by pit bulls that escaped into his yard from next door. He tried to lay out his neighbor with a piece of pipe.

These pet dramas are very common in every city in the country and police tell me that they frequently must pull neighbors apart whose pets have caused some mayhem in the yard next door.

I have spoken to people who sincerely believe that their animals love them and would never do anything to harm them. They think that this also applies to their children, and they are convinced that their dog, who snarls and barks loudly at intruders, is there to defend them and their children and would give their lives to protect them. These ‘guard’ dogs are perfectly capable of killing them and their children and I wish that I did not have firsthand experience of this.

You cannot change the thinking of some people. One example of this way of thinking is of a young man I treated who was savagely bitten by his dog. As I tended to his wounds, he made an excuse for the dog claiming that he had taunted it. I noted that he attended with his young girlfriend who had a little toddler. I told him that this dog was dangerous and that neither he nor his girlfriend should ever leave the child alone with this animal. He scoffed at this saying that not only would the dog never hurt the little child but would sacrifice its life for her.

There are many videos on the internet of parents leaving their sleeping child cuddled up next to a dozing pet. In one case over an hour of footage was taken of a tiny baby sleeping next to an enormous huskie. Most comments on this are filled with sentimental expressions of endearment. My experience tells me this is disturbing. I have few if any supporters of this view.

This way of thinking is not new and indeed there is a medieval poem dating from the 13th Century about a baby in a crib who is knocked out of it by a large hound. When the father thinks to punish the dog, the dog dies from the bite of a serpent from which he was trying to protect the baby. It is a very odd story and demonstrates how deep-seated this way of thinking is where people insert their motives and intentions into the minds of their pets.

Dolphins are not pets but give a good example of the way that human beings think about animals. A young woman in Western Australia very recently alighted from her jet ski to swim among a pod of dolphins but was killed by a shark.

The myth that dolphins protect us from sharks led her to make a fatal decision.

The odd way of thinking about animals reaches its apogee in India where it has become illegal to kill stray dogs. This has led to the burgeoning of the population of stray and street dogs to 50 million. These animals roam the streets in packs and can attack innocent bystanders. Much worse is the incidence of rabies, the highest in the world, killing 30,000 people yearly almost always caused by dog bites. Rabies is a terrible disease and leads to an excruciating death.  Tourists to India are becoming aware that this is a serious threat but the country seems paralyzed by this, unable to act and unable to stop people from feeding these stray animals.

Russia typically took different steps to deal with the stray dog problem in St. Petersburg before the soccer world cup shooting thousands of dogs even in the face of fierce demonstrations opposed to the culling.

There are two million stray cats in Israel, and it is illegal to kill them. They have all but destroyed the wildlife, small animals, and birds in that country, but this is no different to elsewhere, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the USA.

 The governments of our countries are completely unable to respond appropriately. We have become too fond of furry dogs and cats.

Pets have completely altered society. Landlords must now accommodate their tenants’ pets by statute. Comfort animals, initially dogs, but now a variety of feline and avian types must be accommodated by law. Airlines are even allowing these pets on planes in some parts. I was at a conference recently where two comfort dogs nearly tore each other to pieces in the lobby of the venue. One of these dogs was an impressively sized beast. It occurred to me that our notion that comfort dogs are cuddly little furry things is misplaced. People will choose all sorts of hounds to console them.

 I have noted a propensity of some owners to kiss their pets in the mouth, ignorant of a fatal disease that can follow this practice. The offending organism lives in the mouths of both dogs and cats and is called Capnocytophaga canimorsus. The pet owners imagine that the pet derives some pleasure from kissing though dogs and cats much prefer patting.

Yet we treat our “beloved” pets cruelly. We dump them into the street or overpopulated shelters the moment they become inconvenient. We leave them alone at home for hours while they howl and pine for us to the distress of the neighbors. We beat them, chain them up for long periods or cage them on the back of utility vehicles. This cruelty to animals is evident all around us.

As we go about our daily life encountering the crowing, the barking, the excrement, and even the biting of other people’s animals and our own we need to embrace “Pet Courtesy.”  The local authorities who have to deal with the casualties of the “Pet Wars” should sponsor classes. These would involve instructions on not letting your cat out to kill wildlife and soil other people’s property, making sure your fence is secured and repaired, never leaving children alone with dogs, and cleaning up their excrement when you take them for a stroll.

 Society needs to embrace the principles of pet courtesy. Local authorities who regulate the licensing of dogs and cats need to ensure that a legal framework exists to make owners pay if they dump their pet in a rescue pound.

Local authorities have a very bad record in pet management. While most microchip dogs and cats they have removed pet control officers. These very useful people were employed to investigate complaints against pets and their owners including going to a property where a troublesome pet was involved to investigate and mediate between owners and neighbors to sort out disputes.

These workers were often able to defuse conflict between neighbors and advise about pet management. They were removed for two reasons, cost and also because they were often subject to a lot of abuse and threats. They needed to have more power and more backing from the local authority because they prevented many bad situations from arising like fights between neighbors and unrestrained dangerous dogs.

Now the local authorities, if you ring up to complain. instruct the complainant to speak to their neighbor or write a letter to them. Not only was this ineffective it led to a lot of serious conflict between neighbors. Many elderly vulnerable people are simply too afraid to confront the offending pet owner and so are forced to endure all sorts of problems including dog attacks while they are in their yard. This is convenient for the local authority who then does not have to act. There are dangerous animals in the community and a swift response in many instances would save a lot of injuries and even deaths.

We know it is our fault when pets cause problems and we understand that an animal knows no better.

Yet there are times when our pets show such devotion and empathy towards us that we realise that they seem to love us more than they love themselves.

But this does not justify the operation of inserting our minds into theirs because it shows we don’t understand them. If we put the owners down rather than the pet when a person is killed, the pet wars would be over.