My dog, Woody, wakes up and wants breakfast – not just breakfast, but a very expensive kibble prepared with gravy and a quarter cup of warmed pumpkin (his dinner is more elaborate – it’s offered like a buffet plate or poke bowl). He eats, goes outside to do his business and investigate a little, comes back inside, and stops and sits on the rug to think, “Where is my baby?”

He goes around the house on a search for it, and comes back with a flying squirrel toy, ready to play. He bumps the laptop off my thighs several times to engage me, and we play. Later, he lets me know he’d like to go outside; we head to the basement, but he doesn’t want to wear his coat – he knows dogs don’t wear coats, and he hides behind the full clotheslines; we come to an agreement, and he permits me to put the coat on him.

We walk, but I don’t want to go to the park, so we walk through the neighborhoods; but when Woody gets to an arterial street which borders the park, he stops, looks, then looks at me, and pulls, to suggest that we should turn south right there and go to the park – because he’s actually in the mood for the park.

When we finally arrive home after our very long walk, i dry his paws and legs one by one and also his undercarriage; he kisses my face in an annoyed gratitude; then, he lets me know he wants to be close – he has two comfy dog beds and my son’s vacant bed, but he wants to be near – and climbs into a deep club chair made for one – onto my lap – he weighs 65 lbs.

In the late afternoon, he gets antsy, and I ask, “do you need to go out – to peep or poop?” – walking to the back door and opening it, sliding on my shoes — nope, he doesn’t move, instead he stops at the pantry – for a snack – he’s a little hungry, but he knows it’s not dinner time. I ask Woody to perform for his treat – he finds this utterly condescending and even humiliating, but he complies anyway – humoring me (yet I feel embarrassed for him and ashamed of myself for asking).

This is sentience.

My presence doesn’t make Woody sentient. That he is a human companion animal and pet doesn’t make him sentient. He is autonomously and authentically sentient independent of me. He would be sentient if he were a Caribbean potcake dog, if he were a cat, pig, cow, rabbit, deer, parrot, ferret, crow, trout, lobster or turkey.

We humans don’t make animals “real” through loving them like “The Velveteen Rabbit” – they are already real – and alive. Alive. A life. “A life all their own.”

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So,

why wouldn’t I slaughter, cook and consume Woody after humanely “raising him” for months or years, and why didn’t I do so to my beloved Digby when he was alive – back when I was still a meat eater? Because: they were my companions – my friends – my family.

But why wouldn’t I eat another dog who wasn’t my pet, my friend, or my family? Dogs are “pets” specifically bred to be part of a human household or homestead – in America – like a ranch, farm, condo or brick bungalow — to be largely dependent on and cared for by humans. This is also exactly the life of domestic swine, bovines – as well as all CAFO’d animals – pigs, cows, steers, chickens, turkeys, farmed fish — 100% dependent on humans – for sustenance, shelter, reproduction, health and survival — but instead of domesticity, their experience is pain, suffering, terror, abuse, illness and infection, separation, loneliness and slaughter.

Their lives ultimately reduced to our palate pleasure, for our falsely singular and falsely convenient choice of protein, and for our now-wholly unnecessary, grossly unimaginative and lazy retail, commercial, medical and industrial purposes.

Evidence, studies or observation have proven that pigs are smarter than our family dogs; that fish are emotional beings and feel pain; that mother cows mourn and cry when their calves are stolen from them, so that we humans can obtain the product of their lactation – to make into milk, ice cream, cheese, yogurt — a bodily fluid that is truly only suitable for calves; that elephants observe death funerary rituals; that parrots are as smart as five year-old humans. I haven’t even mentioned chimps, dolphins and octopus. I won’t. It hurts too much.

“Like us, these animals embody the mystery and wonder of consciousness; like us, they are not only in the world — they are aware of it; like us, they are the psychological centers of lives uniquely their own.
The desires of food and water, shelter and companionship, freedom of movement and avoidance of pain – these desires are shared by non-human animals and human beings.”

– from Earthlings, the film

(revised Winter 2023 / originally written in 2016)