Humans live symbiotically with dogs.
Essentially, we provide some food and shelter and they provide some
love and entertainment. This relationship varies from culture to
culture. Economically developed communities have the time to develop
a loving relationship with their pets, and care deeply about the well
being of their animals, while communities struggling to make ends
meet may view their pets as curious distractions.
Humans have to provide food for their
pets. In America, we buy dog food. It is not cool in America to
feed dogs human food. IT'S NOT GOOD FOR THEM! To the rest of the
world, this sounds crazy, because dogs love human food, and what is
the point of throwing away food if it can feed a family pet. The
family I live with now in Morocco dedicates time to dividing up
leftovers for their three dogs and ensuring that they eat enough. In
Mali it was a little different. There, the men would eat, and then
the children, and whatever the children didn't eat might go to the
dogs. And if the dogs didn't finish the leftovers the women could
eat (not true; just a joke; sorry).
Humans have to provide shelter for
their pets. Usually this means the dogs and cats make the best of
whatever buildings are around. If they have their space, and it
overlaps with your space, then its officially your pet. In America
we provide doghouses, or install doggy doors, because we are that
obsessed with our animals.
For most the world, pet care ends
there. Feed them and give them some of your territory. And I guess
clean their poop, but we don't need to talk about that. Americans do
other things for their cats and dogs.
Unless their fixed, girl cats and girl
dogs are always pregnant. Most of the world does not bother to fix
their pets. What a strange way to spend money that would be. This
means that there are a lot of cute kittens and puppies all over poor
communities! Unfortunately, this means that their a lot of dead
kittens and dead puppies everywhere too. A cat at my host families
house recently had kittens, and the event was mildly interesting to
the members of my family. When a couple of them died off, it was
also only mildly interesting. In America we are secretive about the
reproduction of our pets, and I actually have no idea where kittens
and puppies come from.
The
economy behind American pet care is larger than the economy of
Swaziland (not a fact, just another bad joke). We take pets
to the doctor. We buy them beds. We buy them food. Treats.
Frisbees. Toys. Scratching posts. We take them to the groomer.
Get them fancy leashes. Pay for their training. Pay for pet
sitters. We love our cats and dogs. I mean, we literally love them.
Like, we cry when they die.
In Morocco, dogs aren't loved, but
sometimes they are liked. They are taken care of, and played with a
little. I've even seen some taken out on walks. I've also seen many
pathetic looking street dogs. And for every Moroccan that says they
like dogs, there are three others that say that they are afraid of
dogs. They do have it better than Malian dogs, though. In Mali,
puppies were toys, and dogs were worthless toys. They would be
abused the same way a child abuses his toys and his worthless toys.
So that's what I got on humans and
pets. Or humans and dogs. I think this was suppose to be a blog
post about pets but I just talked about dogs. Oh well. The lesson: dogs live with humans.
