Dog lovers aren’t animal lovers

We can indeed all be vegan in this country, if we wanted to. Stop being so defeatist. We can build walled greenhouses and gardens, it's totally possible. We can encourage those with gardens and allotments to grow more vegetables, we can create community gardens to grow vegetables, this is happening in certain areas, and can be expanded upon.

Do you honestly, genuinely believe we have enough land to feed 70 million people a vegan diet without importing? We don't.

Yep, scavengers who eat meat (amongst other things, shit included - mine is especially partial to sheep and cow varieties).

The farmed animals we have today are not a natural species. They have been interfered with to the Nth degree so they plump up fast, and die young. I am sure they'd rather not be bred only to be slaughtered. They'd have no consciousness about preserving their family lineage, would they. So what's the big deal if the cows and sheep who are bred to be slaughtered die out as a species? I'd happily save some safe areas for cows and sheep and pigs to have freedom, sure.

We can indeed all be vegan in this country, if we wanted to. Stop being so defeatist. We can build walled greenhouses and gardens, it's totally possible. We can encourage those with gardens and allotments to grow more vegetables, we can create community gardens to grow vegetables, this is happening in certain areas, and can be expanded upon.

I have been vegan for a very long time, and the change in the last 25 years has been amazing. I have no doubt it will continue along this trajectory, just wish some people weren't so stubborn about the change.

I didn't enquire if her doodle was a rescue or bought as a puppy or what not.

I smiled to myself and moved on.

She loves her dog, she’s not an animal lover. I have genuine concerns about the breeding conditions to produce the amount of doodle crosses. That person isn’t an animal lover when the parents are most likely being abused.

Dogs are scavengers, and there is ample evidence they ate human shit as a service to humans to get it out of dwelling areas.

🤦🏽‍♀️ yeah so just stop breeding and kill the existing farm animals. It’s still a lot less suffering than the current system.

A vegan diet is far less land intensive than a meat diet, a very quick Google will tell you that.

I’m not even advocating for a vegan diet for all, do what you want. Just don’t pretend you’re an animal lover when you’re not. You like your pet because of what your pet gives you, that’s all. It’s totally selfish.

It’s lucky that this thread is so full of genuine dog lovers and properly educated dog owners. Unlike the other posters who clearly are totally unsuitable as pet owners, don’t know how to love or treat their dog and should be banned from dog ownership.
As a pp pointed out, parents might not be judged as suitable parents but they still have children and most of the time do their best.
anyway perhaps you’d all like to form a dog ownership assessment panel and decide who amongst us is worthy to own a dog.

Saw a woman in the garden centre with a cockerpoo the other day.

Shopping for herbs, She would pick up a pot, ruffle the leaves, sniff it...

...and bend down and offer her patiently waiting dog the chance to sniff too 🥹

she loves her dog. ❤️

Most farm animals are bred before they're killed. I assume everyone saying "stop interfering" is happy for loads of species to just die out forever?

The UK also can't feed everyone a vegetarian diet with the land it has - so all we'll do is increase imports of plants into the country and damage the environment that way instead.

Eh what do you think happens at the end of a farm animal’s short useful life?

Much of the UK’s natural landscape has been destroyed by sheep grazing, we could always rewild it.

Circle of life. Dogs are omnivores and would eat meat even without our intervention.

You haven't really answered, apart from to say to feed them to lions.

Take away human interference and you will end up with either lots of extinct species, or lots of land completely taken over and becoming unusable for farming all the vegetables and crops we should apparently eating

If they’re feeding their dog meat then they’re clearly not animal lovers!

It’s estimated that 6 billion animals are slaughtered every year for dog food 😭

If the sheep and other animals exist "to control the landscape" then let them be, let them do just that. Let's just not go in and cart them off to the slaughterhouse.

I've already answered about the other animals.

Just stop breeding them. Easy. Nature will balance itself in the countryside. Humans must stop interfering. I am all for us trying to reverse the damage we have done to certain species, in the wilds of Africa etc, but here in the UK, we can just stop breeding farmed animals, stop breeding pets, and focus on enjoying wildlife and one another. I actually do enjoy the beauty of cats, but they are devastating to the environment. I would much rather see more wildlife. It would be better for the planet.

So again, what happens to all the existing animals? Just kill them? Set them free to live natural lives? Sterilise them?

And then what happens to the farmland and the fells where sheep and other animals exist purely to control the landscape? Just let it go wild and become unusable?

In my utopian world, we wouldn't have sheepdogs because we wouldn't have sheep harmers, sorry, sheep farmers, breeding and using and killing sheep. Therefore we wouldn't need dogs to go out herding sheep.

Okay, so in your idealistic world with no animals being bred, what happens to all the existing ones? Just release them into the wild to go feral? Sterilise them? Kill them?

I don't think we should breed any animals. I think we should let nature take care of itself. Dogs are an unnatural species, created by humans, and I believe we should absolutely stop breeding them. Technology is here and will take over for the drug-sniffers, the seeing-eye dogs etc. For the dogs that re already here, I don't see the difference in feeding them to obligate carnivores like lions, who are going to be eating other poor animals like goats and sheep - why not dogs?! Food for thought, eh!

I'd reverse that thinking. We CAN eat meat, but we don't have to. We are designed to be able to eat it if we absolutely have to. But we don't.

I can assure you that most vegans do not look bloody ill.

Images need preapproval so I'll post links instead:

https://www.businessinsider.com/vegan-bodybuilder-how-to-build-muscle-on-plant-based-diet-2020-10

https://www.livekindly.com/actor-joaquin-phoenix-reveals-the-moment-that-made-him-go-vegan-40-years-ago/

https://www.livekindly.com/how-woody-harrelson-became-vegan-icon/

https://vegangreenplanet.com/vegan-athletes-with-gains-the-animals-and-planet/

I am not lecturing anyone. I am providing information. The fact you feel lectured at means you feel on some level that you are wrong.

Yanbu. I don't particularly like dogs but became a dog owner accidentally outside a shopping centre, 3 years ago, a homeless man held a tiny pup with a swollen stomach full of worms, flea bites around the fur on her eyes, cost me €100 and a €250 vet bill.
She has become part of the family and won't be breed. The thought of her pups out there, she has not a popular breed anyway.

But that means one is offering ONE animal a better life AT A COST to hundreds of others that will be bred and then slaughtered, merely to feed that pet. It is just so short-sighted. And no, much meat for pet food is not merely offcuts from the meat-for-humans industry.
How would people feel if instead of breeding chickens, fish, pigs, sheep, cows, and using them to feed dogs, cats and zoo animals, we just stop breeding the farmed animals, and feed the surplus dogs and cats to the zoo animals. I mean, WHY do we find it more palatable to be so ok with goats and chickens being fed to the lions, than dogs and cats? As a vegan, I am obviously against zoos too, but I am making a point. By saving cats and dogs, innumerable other animals are caused immense suffering.

@CoubousAndTourmalet - another poster upthread said that we should use technology instead of working dogs. Not quite sure how that would work on a fell in the arsehole of nowhere

I think pet ownership will become less sociably acceptable and eventually die out. I hope so at least. But I think it will take a long long time yet.

@redboxer321

Given that dogs have lived and worked alongside humans for thousands of years, I am curious about this.
Do you include working dogs? Many of which do live as pets in the home. And if not, then how does man cope without sheepdogs, sniffer dogs, guide dogs etc that play an important role in society?
If these dogs are exempt from the rules of your pet free utopia, then who determines which dogs are allowed to exist alongside handlers and which are not?