If you happen to be in Chicago (or Montreal), there is a ton of human-based circus to see. There are multiple circus schools in both cities. People with Cirque de Soleil-type skills, but local and generally under $30 per performance.
Chicago has the Actor’s Gymnasium and Aloft Loft (both schools with periodic excellent performances), and Acrobatica Infiniti (new nerd theme every month), and others I can’t remember off the top of my head. If you want something more kid-friendly (Acrobatica and Aloft can get pretty racy), Midnight Circus in the Parks runs all summer. You should go!
If you’re in Montreal, you have an embarrassment of riches. I recommend Cirque Eloize - they’re amazing!
Also adding: if you’re in the D.C. area, check out Black Rock Center for the Arts - they just got a grant to bring in new contemporary circus acts, and their curator is excellent. I went to see Gravity and Other Myths there last year, and it was amazing!
Perhaps you have known people who obtained their dogs from a non-objectionable program. I note that it is not Seeing Eye dogs that PETA has a problem with, just some of the programs that produce Seeing Eye dogs.
And how many Seeing Eye dogs have you seen? Just these two that you’ve told us about? Do you feel that your own personal experiences represent a statistically significant number of Seeing Eye dogs?
Nothing on that page backs up your assertion that PETA wants domestic dogs to go extinct. And every shelter I’ve ever adopted from (or known of, actually) requires that you spay/neuter the animal you adopt.
It is required for much the same reason that PETA says they oppose Seeing Eye programs which breed specific dogs: there are already too many dogs on the planet, and many of the ones that exist would make fine Seeing Eye dogs, but instead they are killed due to overcrowding at shelters.
So in your cites, you argued against what you believed to be PETA’s position, but you weren’t accurate in describing (and perhaps understanding) that position and in the other, you mischaracterize what PETA’s goal is and in fact seem to want to argue that the policy of every animal shelter in the United States is wrong, without making any specific counter-arguments.
Actually, I think it’s pretty clear that that’s what they think would be best, in an ideal world:
PETA’s whole approach is quite consistent with the belief that ultimately, we shouldn’t “perpetuate” any “class of animals who are forced to rely on humans to survive”. I don’t think there’s anything ipso facto wrong about this belief, though I don’t happen to share it. (Heck, there have been Shakers and other communities who believed that in an ideal world, people should eventually go extinct.)
As long as PETA favors and supports taking care of the domesticated animals that currently exist, I’m not going to quarrel with them for believing that ultimately it would be better for human-dependent companion species to die out.
“Humans have grown like a cancer. We’re the biggest blight on the face of the earth.” - Ingrid Newkirk, Washingtonian, 1 February 1990
“I am opposed to having children. Having a purebred human baby is like having a purebred dog; it is nothing but vanity, human vanity.” - Ingrid Newkirk, The New Yorker, 23 April 2003
“Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete jungles- from our firesides, from the leather nooses and chains by which we enslave it. … The cat, like the dog, must disappear. … We should cut the domestic cat free from our dominance by neutering, neutering, and more neutering, until our pathetic version of the cat ceases to exist.”
-John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of a Changing Ethic, PETA 1982, p.15.
No, it’s pretty clear they don’t like service animals. Read their own website and literature - the only service dogs they have any approval for are those for the deaf recruited from shelters. There are NO “non-objectionable” seeing eye dog programs as far as they’re concerned.
It’s been 30 years so I don’t recall where those two co-workers got their dogs, although I do remember they got them from different programs.
Quite a few - anyone paying attention who rides public transit in a city like Chicago is going to see a bunch of them over time.
I feel my experience is as significant as PETA’s unbacked assertions that “some” dogs are mistreated and therefore we should eliminate all working dogs. I have no doubt, because the world can be a harsh place, that you could find an example of a mistreated guide dog but PETA’s approach of ending abuse by eliminating the victims from existence is at best bizarre.
PETA doesn’t want just shelter animals sterilized, they want ALL companion animals and working animals sterilized. What happens if you sterilize an entire population? There is no next generation and the population goes extinct. I do not understand why you fail to comprehend that,
You can not get random dogs from a shelter and turn them into guide dogs. For one thing, the dogs have to be sized to the person who will be partnered with them - my one co-worker was only matched with small labs. The other with large German shepherds. This had to do with the size and strength of the respective people. A chihuahua will never be a guide dog, and neither will a miniature poodle or a dachshund or mixes in that size range, they’re just too small.
In addition to knowing people who were partnered with guide dogs, I’ve also known more than one breeder and foster family. PETA’s description of treatment and training are very much at odds with what I have seen with those folks. The “wash out” dogs weren’t just dumped in the garbage, they found homes as valuable pets in some cases, in others they became therapy dogs or were found suited to other types of work.
PETA finds the worst possible examples they can then assert that those outliers are the norm. They aren’t. And rather than trying to help the victims of abuse and work for better treatment of animals they want to exterminate the victims. Not the sort of people I want to be associated with.
One of my earliest memories is going to the circus and seeing the lion tamer in action. Seeing a three-ring circus under a big top was really, really exciting. But those days are gone and I think shutting down is the right decision. There will have to be a new greatest show on earth I guess.
:dubious: To be fair, PETA volunteers do help the victims of animal abuse and work for better treatment of animals. Their position seems to be “If you have a pet, care for it and treat it well, but don’t let it breed. Ultimately it will be better not to have domesticated animal species that are intimately dependent on humans for their well-being”.
Letting a species go extinct from not reproducing (if it were realistically possible to make that happen for the entire population of any domestic animal species, which I very much doubt) is not the same as “eliminating” or “exterminating” existing members of the species, as you hyperbolically claim.
One can disagree with PETA’s extremist position on the existence of domesticated animals, and I do, but there’s nothing cruel about it.
I was completely shocked to hear this. I always thought that the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus was something that would be around forever.
I have great memories of my grandmother taking me to see the Ringling Bros. circus as a child. My wife and I took my son once when we was 8 or 9 years old, but had no particular desire to go back.
I’m a sucker for nostalgia, though, so I just bought tickets for the family for one of their last performances here in Connecticut.
:dubious: First of all, this is a goalpost shift: what we were talking about is the policy position that breeding of domestic animals ought to stop so that their species would die out.
I objected that whether you agree with that policy or not, it doesn’t count as “eliminating” or “exterminating” existing members of the species, and thus is not cruel.
Now you’re talking about “euthanizing healthy, adoptable animals”, which sounds like something else entirely.
I’m not familiar with PETA’s positions on euthanasia of currently existing animals, but here’s what I think about the subject:
Owners, and shelters, should humanely euthanize suffering animals that are terminally ill or injured, as soon as possible.
Owners technically have the right to euthanize a healthy animal if the person carrying out the euthanasia agrees to do it, but I hope that any owner with an ounce of caring or compassion would do everything they could to find a way to give the animal a good new home instead.
Shelters are within their rights to euthanize physically healthy animals with such severe behavioral problems that they stand essentially zero chance of getting adopted, or ones that are very unlikely to be adopted and are miserable in the shelter.
If shelters can give unwanted animals a happy life in the doggy/kitty hotel then they should keep them around as long as they like. But for animals that are pining and unhappy or severely stressed, dragging out an unwanted existence in a shelter is worse than death row for humans.
You can’t explain to a miserable dog why it has to stay in a cage with little attention and constant stress, just on the very remote chance that somebody might choose to take it home someday to be a beloved pet. After a reasonable amount of time to give potential adopters a good chance, if there are no prospects and the animal is traumatized and unhappy, I think it’s kinder to euthanize it. It’s not fair to keep an uncomprehending animal in a prolonged state of misery just to gratify our own sentimental human enjoyment of contemplating a potential happy ending at some possible future date.
Heh. In fairness, put yourself in Feld’s shoes, and imagine you’ve just heard from a consultant – who told you it’s now too late to turn things around, but, man, if only you’d sprung for better advertising back when the circus still had a chance, Feld! And, hey, remember that proposal by your son, when he was pushing to add that new act? That probably would’ve worked, too; that act, or that high-priced stage magician! Feld, you totally could’ve saved the circus if you’d just paid him what he’d asked!
Do you get out there and say PETA, man; took my elephants; whadayagonnado?
I am, to put it mildly, no fan of PETA and their brethren.
However, it seems to me that the circus was on the way out anyway due to changing tastes in entertainment. The banning of the elephants may have hastened the demise, but I think it would have happened anyway.