Our Pets Influence Our Character

“Name your pet and I will tell you who you are.” AVR

"A starving dog at its master's gate predict the ruin of the State." William Blake  

Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature - School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C Tenorio
738 DZRB AM, 8 to 9 evening class Monday to Friday

Eagles, hawks and falcons are not only pets, they are trained as hunters.

Pets influence our character. 
With a pet around you need not sing in the dark to mask a fear, whistle on a lonely path, or latch the door. If you have no one to talk to, pets are willing listeners. Because they don’t argue, you feel right validated. When we think of the variance between our and ourselves. In our loneliness, this empathy is shared, becoming mutual compassion; master and pet feeling for each other.

On the other hand, a pet may rise into a knight ready to defend his master. Pets remind us of our ambition for power (or simply our hidden fierce character) honed it in our imagination as a boa constrictor swallowing a prey whole, or a falcon coming back for the kill. “Name your pet and I will tell you who you are,” is a patterned adage about friendship. Here is a range of pets, each suggesting a kind of personality the owner may have. Flea, rat, pigeon, aruwana, turtle, salamander, bat, preying mantis, monitor lizard, guinea pig, and what have you.

Beware of certain pets. 
Be aware of allergy. There are people who are sensitive to hair and dust. Bites may also cause allergy and worse, they carry diseases such as rabies. Pets are also hosts or carriers of vermin, from lice to pathogens such as the deadly Bubonic plague bacteria. There are pets, which, by their nature as animals, suddenly act on biological instinct to become dangerous attackers of their human masters. Remember that these proclivities, which enabled their ancestors to survive in the wild, are still with them. When threatened, these impulses take the ancient stance of defense or aggression, which is the name of the game of survival and evolution.

A veterinary clinic provides immunization against rabies and other animal-carried diseases. Safeguard children from large pets, such as large breeds of dogs, and potentially dangerous ones such as monkey, boa and tiger cubs.

Two faces of animals in media.
Media is full of inconsistencies. At one time my family saw “Fly Away Home,” a moving story of a girl who with the help of her family guided a flock of geese back to their natural home. How different are the movies, King Kong, ET, Jurassic Park, and lately Artificial Intelligence. These movies sow the elements of fear and terror in an animal world that exists only in imagination. 

But to a child’s mind, such fantasy can be taken seriously and the consequence is not a healthy one to grow up with. There is no kindness anymore, as one would find in “Free Willy,” a moving story on how a whale was saved through the cooperation of a whole community and a boy and his family. The story deepens the wholesome relationship between man and the animal world, a lesson that reminds us of the Aesop’s fables.

With the computer media has made a third dimension of what animals look like and behave. The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Cats and Dogs, Babe, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, and a host of animated cartoon characters, while full of action are devoid of realities of life. These are make-believe stories using the state-of-the-art in audiovisual technologies. The gross effect is alienation from Nature instead of bringing back our children to the fold of Nature. Canned nature is a recipe for city living, albeit a source for money-making. The views in these movies are no different from those from around a skyscraper where many kids today visit or live their lives. They are more akin to the planet Mars than to Earth where we live. ~