What in the world are they thinking?

Hello again,

I saw a news blurb on Bill O'Reilly the other night about training dogs. One of the comments that stood out was the answer to the question about how to get dogs to do what you want, such as "sit". The woman answered that you wait for the dog to sit and then praise and reward it.

HUH? That goes way past stupid. I have two dogs as you can see from the pictures. If the dogs don't do what they're told, they get disciplined. Not beaten, but they're told they're bad dogs and the command is repeated until they do what they're told and THEN they get a treat. If what they do is really bad, such as chewing something up they get swatted with a rolled up newspaper.

The dogs are still in training, but they're making progress. The point of all this is that while I do have an obligation as a human to treat the dogs kindly, they're dogs. They're not human and they don't occupy the same space in the scheme of things as humans do. They're here to alert us to strangers coming and they do a very good job.

The point of all this is that our society has raised the status of animals to that of near human, and in some cases equal status to humans. They're animals! They're here to serve us, feed us and clothe us. They're NOT our partners.

People who talk to animals as if they're another human or tell me I'm "Auntie" to an animal make me nervous. By raising the status of animals to such a height, they've lowered the status of human beings to the level of animals.

The insanity of that just boggles the mind.