Being pet parents comes with a lot of responsibility towards the animals and how to behave with them. Thus our behaviour with the animals reflects on our personality.
The necessity for being a pet parent
Humans are biologically wired to love and connect. This connection exists between humans and extends to animals since they are living beings and have emotions similar to us.
From this fundamental need to love, we want to share this love with the animals as well. Hence we choose to bring in an animal and share our love with them. Before we become a pet parent, we need to understand the reasons for bringing a pet home. Is it because we love animals or other reasons that influenced our decision. After choosing to be a pet parent, we must choose the animal that we want to bring home based on our personality, affordability, and space in our house.
Based on the animal type, we need to select a suitable space for the animal to live comfortably. We need to choose the animal and bring it home as early as possible to enable the animal to be habituated to our environment.
Pet parents raising the animals at home
Like humans, pet animals need to be nurtured with love and care to ensure that they grow into healthy and obedient pets. When animals are brought home, we need to spend as much time as possible, play with them when we have time. Buy animal toys so that the animals can play with them in our absence. While growing up, animals tend to behave disobediently similar to humans; hence, we need to ensure that the animals listen to us. We need to make them understand through our actions and voice to ensure that they follow our instructions and behave in positive ways.
Many of us work these days; if the pets are left alone at home, they tend to get worried and depressed. Hence if pets are alone at home, we either play music or record our voices to compensate for our absence. We can spend time with them when we return home so that they feel happy.
Pet parents treating their animals at home
Today we as pet parents have a close bond with our pets because we have attachments and love them as long as they live. We care deeply about the pets in our home; hence we pamper the animals by feeding them good food, clean drinking water, and providing them safe shelter. We regularly take them for walks for exercise and protect them from other animals on the road. We also take them for rides in our vehicles whenever we travel outside. Our pets are sent to the spa, established exclusively to care for them.
Take them regularly to the veterinary for vaccination, periodic health-checkups, and do much more for their health and safety. As we love our pets, we do whatever is possible to ensure that they live comfortably with us.
Pet parent ignorance towards street animals
Although we love and pamper our pets in our homes as pet parents, we don’t share the same love and care towards the street animals. Hence we discriminate and ignore the street animals in numerous ways. When the street animals approach us for the food, we drive them away in the name of a nuisance. We pamper our pets by feeding them in excess, whereas we don’t care about feeding the street animals even though they suffer and die due to hunger. We don’t give them at least clean-water to drink when they approach us.
When we take our pets for a walk outside, we beat the street animals with sticks or stones, fearing that they might harm our pets. We abuse them physically when they try to sit outside our homes, seeking shelter.
Abandonment and abuse of street animals by pet parents
We behave irresponsibly towards the animals, especially the street animals. Hence we either abandon them when they don’t serve our needs and abuse them through various means.
- The exploitation of animals through animal trade
In the breed’s name, we purchase only breed animals; this promotes animal trade; the animals are used as breeding factories, leading to their killing or abandonment once females stop giving birth. This creates animal breeding centres solely for-profit purposes, creates new breeds of animals, and improves their features, such as producing more milk, animal hoarding, livestock, and animal experiments that lead to animals’ deaths.
- Abandonment of animals
Numerous animals are abandoned for various reasons; these animals are sheltered in animal care NGOs. During covid, pet-parents have abandoned animals. For instance, there are cases where the pet owners have left their pets, fearing the spread of infection from the animals to humans. Several countries across the world have killed or killed the mink due to the fear of the pandemic. When we see animals lying helplessly sick or injured on the roads, we leave them to suffer rather than making a call to a nearby vet or admitting them to hospitals.
We don’t report the animal killings in society.
We see animals being abused, killed by other citizens in our surroundings; instead of stopping such inhuman acts, we become observers and part of the crime towards these animals by not reporting to the concerned animal authorities.
Pet parents need to have awareness of animal laws and obey them.
Being a pet parent comes with its responsibilities and challenges. Hence we need to be mindful that our actions and behaviours towards the animals should not reflect abuse in any form. We need to be aware of the prevention of cruelty to animals as per the prevention of cruelty to the animal’s act of 1960 (IPC section 59 of 1960), whether they are pets or street animals. We need to be aware of the other animal laws to ensure that we respect the animal rights and their need for existence peacefully along with us in our environment.
Conclusion
Humans continue to commit atrocities towards the animals; we need to accept the fact and change ourselves. We need to behave with the animals in empathetic, compassionate ways through our actions. If we do this, we will become positive role models for the kids to emulate and learn. Thus, this will create a positive environment for the animals’ peaceful existence to live in harmony.
Credits: Lakshman Molleti (Concept), Harish Edamadaka (Content Writer), Akshata Jitender (Proofreader)