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I'd like to take a moment to talk about David Yoder of Black Diamond Acres in Romulus, New York. Yoder runs what he calls a kennel and what animal advocates call a puppy mill. Well, yesterday, this "kennel owner" decided it was time to "depopulate" his "kennel"-—which he did by forcing 93 dogs into wooden boxes and then gassing them to death with carbon monoxide.
While it's against federal law to use carbon monoxide to euthanize animals (and against New York law to euthanize your own animals), that's not really the point.
The point is this: In the past 20 years ethologists have made amazing discoveries about dogs. We now know that our canine companions have the exact same emotional repertoire as human beings. They use language, have complex personalities, have culture, have morals, feel empathy, behave altruistically, are capable of laughter, tool use, and, according to a lot of recent findings, may have a capacity for social intelligence that exceeds humans. In fact, in my forthcoming book A Small, Furry Prayer, I make a pretty solid case that they have spiritual experiences as well.
We still have a very Biblical "dominion over the beasts" attitude towards dogs, but on what ground exactly do these attitudes now stand? If your measure has anything to do with cognitive function-which is how most experts define what Descartes called "human specialness"-then dogs exceed human children, developmentally-handicapped human adults and cognitively-impaired human adults.
And, if you're measuring emotional intelligence and social intelligence, then their capacity may even exceed perfectly normal adult humans.
So Yoder is going to pay a fine and perhaps spend a little time in jail, but you got to ask yourself-why isn't he on trial for murder?
