Lessons Our Children Learn

By Linda Spurlin

Years ago I watched a documentary on Pakistan. A small crowd of people, mostly children, sat around in a circle watching a black bear, chained by one hind leg, being attacked and torn apart by dogs. This was their idea of sport and entertainment! I was appalled.

Due to current events, Pakistan is regularly in the news now and I think back to that horrific scene on my television set. How can we understand a culture that is raised to find animal abuse amusing? Our morals, customs, education, food, entertainment, even our gods, are different. Understandably, when children are raised to think something is acceptable, they usually grow up thinking it is acceptable.

Those who do studies on such things say that children who abuse animals often grow up to abuse their spouses, their own children, or prey on others who are weak and helpless. Easy to understand then, why those from other countries whose childhoods were different then our own, would still have those different views on life after they grow up.

How terrifying to think that what we do, how we act, what we say, or how we treat our animals, could affect our children for the rest of their lives. Such a responsibility on our shoulders! If you thought for a minute that dumping kittens off at the side of the road in a cardboard box could affect how your children might grow up to treat an unwanted child someday, would you do it? If you thought that kicking your cat might encourage your child to kick their own children someday, would you rethink the cat’s crime? If you change annoying dogs as often as underwear, would you reconsider it if you thought for a minute that you were teaching your child that divorce is an easy way out?

This is a disposable world that we live in. If we don’t like it, we throw it out. If it breaks, we throw it out. If it offends us, we throw it out. And, unfortunately, many people use this same mentality on animals as well as inanimate objects. Dumping kittens, or confining dogs to a life of solitary confinement in the backyard are lessons children do not need to apply to their future relationships.

How mom or dad treats the family pet really can affect children’s future relationships with both pets and people. Something as simple as spaying or neutering Fido or Fluffy, along with discussion about the unwanted puppies or kittens in the world being cold and hungry and unwanted, can help start the little wheels turning in a child’s brain about their responsibility to others. If you thought that something as simple as spaying or neutering your pet could be a step towards world peace through the eyes of a child, would it make that trip to the vet a little easier to take?