Disabled Animals

A friend sent me a link recently that talks about disabled animals, specifically, rabbits, and their quality of life. This friend has a pet rabbit, who she loves, and who recently became disabled after an operation. After reading the link, I got thinking about the subject of disabled animals, and whether they should be treated like disabled people.

According to the link, from the House Rabbit Society, there are three things to be considered when deciding whether or not to keep a disabled animal alive:

1. Appetite: does she still like to eat?
2. Affection: does she exchange affection with you or any other companion?
3. Attitude: is she interested? Does she like to watch, sniff, and listen to the things going on around her? Does she still show pride and try to groom herself?

As a person with a disability, who has suffered and seen other people suffer as a direct result of disability, I find the opinions of people who have enough feelings for animals to have these kinds of discussions and thoughts more than a little extreme. I realise that many animal lovers would disagree with my opinion, and that is fine. But I don’t think a disabled animal can ever be compared to a disabled human. Humans cannot tell how much intelligence animals have, and how much pain they feel. Personally, I think that people have far more intelligence than animals ever will.

Another point I have to make about this topic is also illustrated by this article. The writer’s friend, who has MS, told her about the time when she was tooling down the street in her motorized wheelchair enjoying a drizzly day. But her pleasure was not perceived by an onlooker, who wondered aloud, “Why did they let her out on a day like this?”

Personally, I think that people still have a long way to go before they can even think about treating animals like people. There may come a time when people treat each other perfectly. In my opinion, though, people should not  treat animals like people until people stop treating people like animals.

Your comments are very welcome.