A wolf naturally wants to lead. we’ve removed their natural instinct and now call them pets. see? we agree. These pets don’t even like their own natural food anymore unless it’s processed. What’s bad is to keep take what our ancestors did for survival and now spin it into an animal that depends on you for it’s mere existence. Yes that’s progress.
I agree with Artemis. I’ve served several cats over the years. Nearly all of them will take off for one to six days, but they come back. Feed a cat and it will stick around.
I just don’t the mutual relationship here. One has dominance over the other.
This is simply wrong. All of my cats have killed and devoured mice, birds, chipmunks, etc.
I remember one time my dog dragged a deer skeleton in the yard and I didn’t have to feed him for several days.
Are these not traits we bred into them? to continually seek us for food and shelter?
Yes, there is a mutal relationship. I provide food, shelter, & medical attention. They give me pest control and other services. There is a mutal exhange of affection.
Good to know…most dogs i know nowadays won’t even touch raw meat. And how did cats seem to like fish?..don’t remember felines ever fishing… could be wrong though.
Speaking of evolution - your argument in here keeps evolving, into weaker and weaker forms, as people pick it to shreds.
You are now complaining that, because humans have loved and valued dogs for millenia and expended our species’ collective time, resource, and attention on caring for them and protecting them*, dogs are now more dependent on us than their wolf ancestors, and love us in return.
If you fail to realize how absurd your argument has become at this point (as if it were not absurd from the start), I’m done with this thread.
- and note that, for the entirety of human history except for the past 100 years or so, this was no small thing
Didn’t read any of the links, did you? And you wonder why no one is taking you seriously. 
Only a very few wolves ‘naturally want to lead’…the rest NATURALLY want to follow. They are pack animals BY NATURE. We are the pack. The ancestors of modern dogs were the wolves that NATURALLY wanted to follow. Follow the pack. Our pack. We took that raw material and further refined it over the course of THOUSANDS OF YEARS. Years where we didn’t keep those proto-dogs in chains, unable to escape, but instead we FED THEM AND GAVE THEM SHELTER. This formed a bond between our species, a mutual bond that has strengthened over time.
You are attempting not only to project your ridiculous human oriented thinking on another species but ignoring over 10,000 years of adaptation and bonding, and how the relationship between our species have alwas been about mutual advantage and need.
Sorry, but you are really not covering yourself in glory here.
No, they don’t. They are pack animals by nature.
Why is it bad?
Again, the mutuality has been explained to you a bunch of times. If you’re not interested in reading or thinking about what people are telling you in response to your questions, this is totally pointless.
No, they are not traits we have bred into them. Heck, I’ve successfully “enslaved” wild chickadees and nuthatches by offering them sunflower seeds and soot in the palm of my hand while standing still. Most animals are strongly drawn toward food, and the most easily-obtained food is favored.
ok guys…glad you’ve given me your opinion. well taken. I just don’t see how having dominion over 2 species and calling them pets, yet call it an equally beneficial relationship. lol We do this humans everyday and yet we wonder where’s it’s coming from. we’ll agree to disagree. good night
we don’t call those pets now do we? i hear you…let’s just agree to disagree.
I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. And neither do you. There are some terrible things that some people do to some animals, but 99% or more of all dogs and cats that live with humans do so voluntarily, and benefit greatly as a result. If you don’t believe me, ask them, because very few of them could not leave their homes if they wanted to. And when they do want to, they leave and don’t come back. I don’t make Blackjack threaten to catch and eat the UPS man, he does that because it’s his home too and he doesn’t like strangers in trucks invading his territory. And he also doesn’t want anything to happen to his family. I don’t make Blackjack do anything. He does what he wants to do. And if he wants to please me because of some intensive breeding done a long time in the past, not only is that not my fault, it is my responsibility to make sure he has a good life because that same breeding did not leave him as well suited to life in the wild as his distant relatives were, and maybe some of my distant relatiives were responsible for that. The only enslaved animal I see here is that high horse you are sitting on.
What’s so hard to understand? Dogs and cats get food, security, shelter and protection for themselves and their offspring. We get companionship, security and protection. Your ‘equally beneficial relationship’ is a HUMAN concept that is meaningless to another species.
Well, you have fled the thread it seems, so probably for the best.
They don’t choose anything. What makes you think animals, esp dogs, consciously choose anything the way people do? Animals survive by instinct. Dog ancestors instinctively hung out with human and survived as a result, developing into the domesticated dog. Pretty cool deal.
This is an article I read a couple years ago about domesticated animals and the domestic phenotype. It’s a pretty fascinating read.
and after reading that again, I want a pet fox
I completely agree with Pocho and have liberated my cats from their oppressive place on a comforter near a radiator. I placed them in an alley where they now enjoy the brisk January air. I’m sure they are much happier despite what their plaintive meows and scrapes on the door might seem to imply.
I didn’t actually do that.
My slaves/dogs sleep in a king size bed, with doggy steps and all…and have their own love seat to lounge in…they wake up around 8 everyday, get a milk bone & go outside …then get their breakfast, dog food and usually some granola bar treats that I eat or scrambled eggs if I do eggs or peanut butter toast ( bulldogs eating peanut butter = awesome entertainment) …then they nap until about noon , go out again, get a milk bone …nap until 3 …eat dinner (dog food) and go out again, then a greenie treat for their teeth…then goe for a walk…then nap until we eat our dinner at about 6… Then they get a few scraps, go out again…come in and they are about kaput for the day…they pretty much sleep the rest of the night and go out one more time before lights out for us…hardly a rough life and certainly I doubt they could fend for themselves if we just turned them loose…
The two are not mutually exclusive.
This type of argument was used to justify human slavery. The idea was that even if african slaves were unfree, their masters gave them a better life than they might otherwise have.
The problem is that any argument in favor of pet or animal ownership is logically the same as one for human slavery because we are animals.
This of course leads to the predictable argument that animals besides us are intrinsically less intelligent, less capable of governing themselves or appreciating the freedoms that we enjoy. However, the problem with this argument is that it again can be applied to humans. Not all humans are equally intelligent, or capable of governing themselves. Indeed there is a great disparity in human intelligence, between the lowest and highest orders. Should a genius or prodigy be able to own developmentally disabled people? The gulf between their intellects and abilities to govern themselves is about as wide as between an ordinary man and a non-human animal.
Seeing how cats originally domesticated themselves, it would be terribly inconsiderate of us to un-domesticate them.