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Ebook340 pages6 hours
Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this ebook
A life shared with pets brings many emotions. We feel love for our companions, certainly, and happiness at the thought that we’re providing them with a safe, healthy life. But there’s another emotion, less often acknowledged, that can be nearly as powerful: guilt. When we see our cats gazing wistfully out the window, or watch a goldfish swim lazy circles in a bowl, we can’t help but wonder: are we doing the right thing, keeping these independent beings locked up, subject to our control? Is keeping pets actually good for the pets themselves?
That’s the question that animates Jessica Pierce’s powerful Run, Spot, Run. A lover of pets herself (including, over the years, dogs, cats, fish, rats, hermit crabs, and more), Pierce understands the joys that pets bring us. But she also refuses to deny the ambiguous ethics at the heart of the relationship, and through a mix of personal stories, philosophical reflections, and scientifically informed analyses of animal behavior and natural history, she puts pet-keeping to the test. Is it ethical to keep pets at all? Are some species more suited to the relationship than others? Are there species one should never attempt to own? And are there ways that we can improve our pets’ lives, so that we can be confident that we are giving them as much as they give us?
Deeply empathetic, yet rigorous and unflinching in her thinking, Pierce has written a book that is sure to help any pet owner, unsettling assumptions but also giving them the knowledge to build deeper, better relationships with the animals with whom they’ve chosen to share their lives.
That’s the question that animates Jessica Pierce’s powerful Run, Spot, Run. A lover of pets herself (including, over the years, dogs, cats, fish, rats, hermit crabs, and more), Pierce understands the joys that pets bring us. But she also refuses to deny the ambiguous ethics at the heart of the relationship, and through a mix of personal stories, philosophical reflections, and scientifically informed analyses of animal behavior and natural history, she puts pet-keeping to the test. Is it ethical to keep pets at all? Are some species more suited to the relationship than others? Are there species one should never attempt to own? And are there ways that we can improve our pets’ lives, so that we can be confident that we are giving them as much as they give us?
Deeply empathetic, yet rigorous and unflinching in her thinking, Pierce has written a book that is sure to help any pet owner, unsettling assumptions but also giving them the knowledge to build deeper, better relationships with the animals with whom they’ve chosen to share their lives.
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Read more from Jessica Pierce
The Last Walk: Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Dog's World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5
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Reviews for Run, Spot, Run
Rating: 3.3750025 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
4 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a quick and easy read, although some of the subject matter is quite grim. There are numerous footnotes.The author somewhat misstates Temple Grandin's position on death versus suffering for animals. Grandin has a lot more to say about it than the author seems to have read and she is far more nuanced. The author also seems not to have heard of the legal struggles that human beings have engaged in for their own right to die to end their suffering. Consequently, her discussion of the choice of euthanasia for pets seems naive.Temple Grandin believes that, essentially because animals are not good at meta-cognition, that fear is often a greater source of suffering for humans than animals; for example, a trapped cow can rip its own leg off if sufficiently terrified. She also points out that a dog can't be told, and will never understand, that the suffering it is undergoing at the vet's is so that it can live longer or some other thing; it will only know that it is scared and in pain. So, deciding whether to euthanize or not should take that into account. Neither Grandin nor the author sees casual euthanasia as morally appropriate.