21/08/2024
🥼🐕 Science and Dogs
Science has been an invaluable ally in advancing our understanding of dogs, but it’s important to recognise its limitations. Through scientific exploration, we’ve learned that dogs are unique beings with their own species-specific traits. We know they possess a mammalian brain that functions as it should, they experience emotions, exhibit remarkable intuition and intelligence, and are capable of problem-solving, communication, and understanding language. Science has also helped debunk outdated myths—proving that dogs are not wolves in need of human dominance, but rather social beings in their own right.
However, I often encounter professionals who insist that if something hasn’t been scientifically proven, it’s not worth considering. This rigid mindset restricts our ability to learn and grow. We don’t need science to understand everything, and we shouldn’t allow it to dictate our moral compass. Instead, we should use science as a valuable guide, complementing it with our knowledge, intuition, observations, and, most importantly, our ethics and morals. Science can, and unfortunately has been, manipulated to support biased views, leading to harmful practices. It can be distorted to justify the use of punishment-based training, the use of shock collars under the guise of harmlessness, or the promotion of unhealthy diets as beneficial. Science, when stripped of ethics, can fail us.
We don’t need scientific validation to know that harming an animal is wrong—just as we’ve never needed it to prove that domestic or child abuse is wrong. We know harming others is wrong, because it is wrong. These truths are self-evident, grounded in our values, ethics, and morals. We instinctively know that dogs are sentient beings who understand and communicate with us, who express their desires and needs, and who can make choices. While science has confirmed these things, our inherent understanding of them existed long before the studies.
Science is indeed valuable and plays a crucial role in our world, but we must be careful not to over-rely on it. Generally speaking, if a method or practice wouldn’t be acceptable to use on a child, then it’s not acceptable to use on a dog. For those who find comfort in using shock collars, prongs, slip leads, or any form of physical or verbal abuse—ask yourself, would you feel the same way if these methods were applied to a child?
