Animal intelligence and things that don't exist

I meant to publish this on this blog instead of my other one so sorry to do double duty.

Now when it comes to animals as individuals, no one could be a bigger softie than me. I can't even leave the house without my dog in tow anymore, though I am thinking about trying a different strategy due to the dog hair in my car. I used to hand raise my hamsters. I saved a snake from a certain death at my mom's house by promising to escort it personally to the other side of Oracle Rd. I kicked in forty bucks and cab fare out of the goodness of my own heart.

But seriously animals are total idiots. Horses as case in point. Does anyone know the reason they have to put a horse down if it breaks its leg, even in our day and age. JP3, you are a veterinarian, why don't you tell us?

Just kidding, but sometimes my brother knows so much about things that I wouldn't be surprised.

IT IS BECAUSE HORSES ARE TOO STUPID NOT TO STEP ON THEIR LEG EVEN IF IT IS BROKEN.

You would think they could set the bone and splint it, and in some species including our own (sometimes) that works, but not in horses. They will keep trying to trot around on their broken leg like there's no tomorrow. That is probably why we are able to break them into manual servitude so easily.

Even my beloved bulldog doesn't qualify as smart. I won't fool myself at all on that score.

Today as he shows his increasing heat intolerance he showed that as unable as he is to tolerate the heat he is equally unwilling to stay out of the kitchen, so to speak. Ok it is his favorite room, for more reasons than one.

I tried to get him to stay downstairs because it is SO much cooler down there but he dutifully trotted up and down the stairs every time I went up and down with laundry or dishes or whatever in his continuing search to escape the feelings of insecure attachment he attained in his puppyhood (thanks to luvabulldog, as always). It makes me cringe to think that he spent the first summer of his tender little life outside ALL DAY. At least he got sprayed down with a HOSE afterward. I wonder during the summer whether he would like the hose any more than in the winter. He seems to have a problem now even with his warm bubble bath, so I am pretty sure the hose came in a distant second to how much he liked the mud and filth he had to run around in all day before he came in.

So animal lovers, I am with you. I am infinitely tender toward these creatures, particularly those that I am attached to like those in my care. Including the two legged variety.

But in the cases of those animals with less than you would call human-like sentience, it is not a good idea to anthropomorphize.

EVEN PITA PUTS DOWN THREE QUARTERS OF THE ANIMALS THEY RESCUE!

So as I say, I love animals, just like I love the planet and want to save the world, etc. And I suppose horses have even fewer brains than some of the animals that we have no reservations about eating, like pigs.

But they are not people. And just as any cause to be taken up on a banner or on a bumper sticker, there are complicated issues involved in any moral or philosophical issue like whether a dog is smiling.

And the answer is yes MY dog is smiling, because he knows he has hoodwinked about ten years of manual servitude from me.

(By the way whether there is a smile on a dog is a famous philosophical question, which now falls more into the per view of animal psychology).