They say, “Dogs are the only living things in this world that love you more than they love themselves.” A long mouth, a wet nose, eyes that resemble big sparkling buttons are a few characteristics that generally define a dog. Just a small whistle can make a dog hyperactive, and run towards the person blowing the whistle. They have a great memory, hence making them a part of the intelligent species living on Earth. They are known to be capable of predicting natural disasters and can give people, a heads up. They are used as Sniffers by the Federal agencies of almost all the countries to find the discrepancies of varying forms, catching criminals etc. But in today’s world, all this come down as a Status Symbol.
In this advancing generation of technology and a hectic lifestyle, everything a person does is to maintain a status in the society. From the number of washrooms in one’s house to the breed of the pet they own, all these things come down to one thing that is upholding a status in the society. We can usually see that any person going to get a pet dog prefers to go for some Superior species. The thing that leaves me awestruck is that who divided the species of dogs into Superior or Inferior. Were these the same people, who divided the people of this world into Rich and Poor or being from a higher or lower caste? No one has the right to discriminate anyone into some underlying status. It is usually known that God created mankind but mankind created discrimination. It is the thinking of the people that leads to all the status or the discrimination caused in the society.
Talking of pets, why do people pay thousands of bucks just to get a dog belonging to a particular set of species like Labrador, German Shepherd etc. while they can’t even feed a dog that just roams around in their street and is suffering from malnutrition? The roaming species of dogs are categorized under the name of “Stray”, which has a literal meaning of “being homeless”. The only difference between a stray dog and a pet is giving it a home. If we can give home to some particular breed, then we can also give a shelter to a dog on the streets. A street dog, that we refer to being stray, is usually a victim of the anger of by passers, pedestrians etc. They levy down their anger by beating them, which is totally unacceptable. This all goes down under violence against dogs. If you can’t give them a shelter, simply don’t beat them up if they are having a shelter of the nature.
I came across an even worse situation, in which some kid picked up a newly born puppy, just after its mother gave birth to it. Unable to take proper care of the pup, he just wrapped it up, kept it in a cardboard box and left it on the street. My father found it and brought it home. We tried to keep up his nutrition, fed him whenever required, took him to a vet, but the separation of the pup from its mother was too difficult for it to handle. All the efforts to save him went in vain, and the pup died after a couple of days. We could do nothing other than watching that poor thing die. All this could have been prevented if the kid wouldn’t have picked up that puppy from the street. This is one of the reasons of cruelty against dogs. They aren’t safe on the streets and people are just not ready to adopt them.
Government has been putting down various efforts to prevent this. They are investing a decent amount of money and assets in building shelter homes for dogs and other animals roaming down the streets, but as per the present visible situations, the efforts are going in vain. We can usually see at least a couple of dogs around every corner of the city that are too much aggressive and are ready to follow a vehicle or a pedestrian down the road. The improper shelter, feeding and vaccinations given to them lead to development of such a behavior in them, and this behavior is not only following people down the road, but also inviting a large number of injuries in the form of dog bites, accidents and diseases like rabies being spread in the general population.
The status of a Man’s Best Friend can be given to a dog, only as long as a good relation is maintained between them. All this can be brought down to a conclusion that instead of behaving improperly with the dogs on the streets, just try feeding them and their family or adopting the street dogs, giving them proper vaccination etc. At the end of the day, they are also living beings like us. They have the same reason to live as we do. The only difference between us and them is they cannot speak, and hence, cannot complain, unlike us. But we, the human beings, being the most intelligent of all the species on Earth, can live up to our name and show some humanity to these living beings. We could help the government in coming up to solutions like speeding up the tasks of building shelter homes, and we could donate stuff for them. So these efforts would someday turn into a big revolution and we could change the way of speaking about a dog. Instead of taking a dog as a status symbol, we would show them some humanity, and we would start calling dogs as “him/her” instead of “it.” After all, they are not things, but living beings.