What if the family pet said, 'I'm only a dog?'

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In the Garden of Eden, our first parents were given dominion over the animals, a responsibility that passed to humankind after their fall from grace. Since then, we humans have utilized animals -- both domesticated and wild -- as a source of food, and placed exotic animals in zoos and circuses for our amusement.People have adopted yet other animals as companions. Only a minority of contemporary Americans keep animals on farms, but there are pets in half of our nation's homes -- typically dogs, cats and birds. When our children were young, the Younts also harbored pets with less companionable qualities -- turtles, lizards, rabbits, gerbils and squirrels among them.If you ask People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals how dutifully humans are exercising dominion over our fellow creatures, they will show you pictures of tortured laboratory animals and caged beasts ready for the slaughterhouse. But pet breeders can also be cruel, because they are not content to let pets reproduce naturally, as we humans do.Since humans are not pedigreed, children are mongrels, whose appearance, temperament, and abilities parents are unable to predict accurately. By contrast, breeders are devoted to producing perfect pets. While neither my wife nor I can boast of "pure blood," our Scottish terrier has papers that attest to her uncontaminated "Scottiness". A "perfect" Scottish terrier most closely matches those characteristics that have been bred into the breed through the centuries.Any veterinarian will acknowledge that mongrel pets are, on the whole, healthier, smarter, and longer-lived than the purebreds. The genetic strengths and weaknesses of mongrels cancel out over time. But, like the old royal families of Europe, who intermarried, "show" dogs and "show" cats have inherited the weaknesses of their species.In Britain the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has identified half-a-dozen congenital defects that are the direct result of attempts to produce perfect canine specimens. This year the RSPCA has ended its association with Crufts (the UK's equivalent of our Westminster Dog Show) to protest the breeding of deformed pedigreed dogs.Primitive societies worshipped animals as gods, not least because of their apparent self-assurance and equanimity. If pressed, people excuse their own defects by insisting, "I'm only human!" If our terrier could speak in her defense, I cannot imagine she would protest anything so lame as "I'm only a dog."In the quest for producing his idea of perfect people, Hitler gave us the Holocaust, which attempted to eliminate Jews, gypsies, gays and those deemed mentally defective. In a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to create an all-white population, Australian authorities kidnapped aboriginal children from their parents, forcing them to speak only English and to absorb white culture in isolated prison-like schools. The film, The Rabbit-Proof Fence, tells the story of people who played God attempting to create such perfect human beings.Contact David Yount at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and at dyount(at)erols.com.