Hunting dogs and slavery

If anyone thought slavery has been abolished, they're in for a surprise. According to Kenneth Cassar (March 1), animal rights dictate that "breeding, selling and buying non-humans for human purposes is treating them as property, and therefore as slaves."

So his advice to anyone owning a pet, or breeding any animal for human consumption, should be to set them free and let them lead a life in liberty.

Mr Cassar does not consider the love for a cherished pet as being acceptable. According to him, anyone owning a pet is a slave owner. Therefore, it follows that anyone owning a pet shop is a slave trader. A vet would qualify as a slave doctor.

Mr Cassar goes on to state that the animal rights view is that "we should stop breeding, selling or buying any more dogs, while we should continue taking care of the ones already in existence". In plain language, dogs should no longer be bred after the ones we have die out.

How's that for championing animal rights! The same argument when applied to all other bred animals would simply mean no more animals. This statement clearly shows the extremism behind his reasoning.

Mr Cassar still insists on asking "how dogs manage to hunt high flying birds without wings or guns". The answer is that, in preference to waiting for their hunting dogs to evolve wings, hunters normally help their dogs by using their guns. In the case of ground game, hunting dogs do not need to evolve wings, so they scent, trail, set, point, and flush the birds, but still need to be helped by the hunters and their guns to be able to get their game. God forbid, the hunters would have to wait for them to evolve wings for that purpose too.

Hopefully this explanation goes some way to satisfy Mr Cassar's "eager(ness) to learn". What hunting dogs do best is hunting. This is their specific purpose in life, and it is right and proper it should be so, otherwise one would not be justified in calling them hunting dogs.

As any other dog lovers, my family and I treat our dogs with great care and affection. The love we have for our animals goes far beyond simply assigning them a purpose. Hunting for me and my dogs is the sharing of a relationship which is tantamount to being symbiotic.

Slavery is total degradation, deprivation and drudgery. How Mr Cassar can think in these terms of an animal that is cared for and loved is beyond reason. His assertion that dog ownership equals dog slavery is a gross non-sequitur. And yet, thriving on making a fool of himself, it seems he will insist on such comparisons.