My default assumption is that when animals do something I would do, they also think what I would think and feel what I would feel. If I’m having fun playing a game with a cat, the cat is having fun playing a game with me. Obviously animals can’t do everything that I can do, but that doesn’t mean that animals are somehow less sophisticated than I am when animals and I do do the same thing.
My dog and I usually did things as equals. For example, we both liked going outside when the weather was nice, hugging, wrestling, and visiting our friends. People would tell me that I was supposed to train him so that he would obey me, but I wouldn’t want to be trained to obey someone so I never trained him beyond the basic “don’t poop indoors.” (This makes certain other dog owners so mad for some reason.) The one issue where I really wish he could have understood me but he couldn’t was food. I had so much food, so why didn’t I feed him more? I don’t think he held that against me, but he did try to correct the imbalance by helping himself to anything edible that I left where he could get to it.
mammals are often social creatures, and ‘play’ is a required activity associated with being social (learning the rules).
i would counter though on the lack of training. you seem to want to treat the pet as you would yourself, but this is not the best way to look at it. you should treat them as your child and i think we all agree that children need guidance to achieve functional adulthood… sometimes rigidly so.
my dog needs to come when called for his safety, not because i demand respect or authority.
I don’t think that has never not been a thing… Read memoirs/letters from earlier times and you’ll see plenty of it too. The big shift was probably admitting the children don’t yearn for the mines, but we seem to be heading back that way (eta: in the USA anyway I won’t paint other countries with our fuckery lol).
I agree with you, with the caveat that to the extent that dogs are like children, they can be well-behaved children but they’re never going to become adults and so spoiling them doesn’t have the same negative consequences that spoiling a human child would.
My dog actually knew a bunch of different commands including “come” that he would obey as part of playtime (he could even walk on his hind legs, which always impressed people) but I don’t think he was temperamentally suited to ever being loose around anything dangerous. He would forget everything and start running as fast as he could whenever he saw squirrels and certain other small animals, so it was up to me to tie him securely to my wrist whenever we went outside.
Some people are going to think “this guy doesn’t know how to train a dog if he couldn’t train his dog not to chase squirrels” but I promise you that I’ve met other dogs and my dog wasn’t like most of them. I’m not saying he was necessarily impossible to train. (How would I know?) However, he was more impulsive than any other dog I’ve met, including untrained puppies. People would assume he was less than one year old even when he was actually nine.
Most dogs actually enjoy training. It’s another game! One where they get treats for doing the right thing! My dog actually gets antsy if I don’t have him do any trick routines for a few days.
Edit to say you do you and if your dog and you are happy that’s all that really matters
Just to clarify: my dog could do tricks and he usually would for snacks, but he didn’t do them if he didn’t want to. Sometimes he would come check if I had a snack for him and if I didn’t he would give me the “do you think I’m stupid” look and walk away.
My default assumption is that when animals do something I would do, they also think what I would think and feel what I would feel. If I’m having fun playing a game with a cat, the cat is having fun playing a game with me. Obviously animals can’t do everything that I can do, but that doesn’t mean that animals are somehow less sophisticated than I am when animals and I do do the same thing.
My dog and I usually did things as equals. For example, we both liked going outside when the weather was nice, hugging, wrestling, and visiting our friends. People would tell me that I was supposed to train him so that he would obey me, but I wouldn’t want to be trained to obey someone so I never trained him beyond the basic “don’t poop indoors.” (This makes certain other dog owners so mad for some reason.) The one issue where I really wish he could have understood me but he couldn’t was food. I had so much food, so why didn’t I feed him more? I don’t think he held that against me, but he did try to correct the imbalance by helping himself to anything edible that I left where he could get to it.
mammals are often social creatures, and ‘play’ is a required activity associated with being social (learning the rules).
i would counter though on the lack of training. you seem to want to treat the pet as you would yourself, but this is not the best way to look at it. you should treat them as your child and i think we all agree that children need guidance to achieve functional adulthood… sometimes rigidly so.
my dog needs to come when called for his safety, not because i demand respect or authority.
Even modern parenting has taken an odd twist as many treat their child as their friend or a toy for their amusement.
I don’t think that has never not been a thing… Read memoirs/letters from earlier times and you’ll see plenty of it too. The big shift was probably admitting the children don’t yearn for the mines, but we seem to be heading back that way (eta: in the USA anyway I won’t paint other countries with our fuckery lol).
I agree with you, with the caveat that to the extent that dogs are like children, they can be well-behaved children but they’re never going to become adults and so spoiling them doesn’t have the same negative consequences that spoiling a human child would.
My dog actually knew a bunch of different commands including “come” that he would obey as part of playtime (he could even walk on his hind legs, which always impressed people) but I don’t think he was temperamentally suited to ever being loose around anything dangerous. He would forget everything and start running as fast as he could whenever he saw squirrels and certain other small animals, so it was up to me to tie him securely to my wrist whenever we went outside.
Some people are going to think “this guy doesn’t know how to train a dog if he couldn’t train his dog not to chase squirrels” but I promise you that I’ve met other dogs and my dog wasn’t like most of them. I’m not saying he was necessarily impossible to train. (How would I know?) However, he was more impulsive than any other dog I’ve met, including untrained puppies. People would assume he was less than one year old even when he was actually nine.
Most dogs actually enjoy training. It’s another game! One where they get treats for doing the right thing! My dog actually gets antsy if I don’t have him do any trick routines for a few days.
Edit to say you do you and if your dog and you are happy that’s all that really matters
Just to clarify: my dog could do tricks and he usually would for snacks, but he didn’t do them if he didn’t want to. Sometimes he would come check if I had a snack for him and if I didn’t he would give me the “do you think I’m stupid” look and walk away.
Cats have no complex thoughts, it’s just food, groom, hunt, sleepy, must run
Idk if there is even a point to try to imagine what cat feels or thinks