How Eddie made me think about Animal Rights (Part I)

It was a cold winter day in January when we first brought home Eddie, our new puppy. He was a “pure-breed double-coated” German Shepherd, one of the eight pups born to Elsa, a docile bitch *owned* by a hobby breeder. To acquire this trophy pup, dad paid Rs. 3000, a princely sum in the mid-1990s. It was a very exciting time for my little brother, “K”, and me—our dream of getting a “pet” dog had finally come true! But… something about the entire situation felt wrong; what, my preteen mind couldn’t yet pinpoint.

Eddie cried throughout the first night he was with us. He was probably missing his mother, the warmth of her body, the comfort of suckling her teats, the company of his siblings. He was, after all, just an infant, albeit of a different species! Then it struck me why something felt wrong: a tiny baby, not even a month old, had been taken away from his mother and sold to strangers! Nonetheless, my parents did their best in raising him. The pup was taken to the best vet in the city and arrangements were made for him to have a comfortable life. Due care was taken regarding his food and vaccinations.

A few weeks passed. It was peak winter. One day, while playing with our naughty little fur-ball, K blurted out of the blue, “We should have adopted a puppy from the streets, no? Eddie would have found a home anyway!”

“Yes,” I nodded, as a sense of guilt crept up in my soul. Adoption had been K and my first choice, but our parents had talked us out of it. “A mongrel won’t be compatible with our social status,” they had reasoned, “we will get a good breed dog.” Thus, instead of bringing home a puppy from the streets—someone who desperately needed a home—we had “purchased” a dog!  That was the first time I became consciously aware of the “commodity status” assigned to dogs though it would be years before I learned of the term.

While K and I had been raised to view cats, dogs, crows, and parrots as “friends” but fish, chicken, and mutton as “food,” bringing home Eddie made us rethink our views about all animals. K, who was hardly ten years old back then, observed that while we would never eat Eddie—or let anyone else eat him—we did eat fish and chicken. Didn’t fish and chicken also feel pain like puppies did? How could we love Eddie but still eat other animals? “All animals are like Eddie,” he reasoned. “Let’s stop eating non-veg, OK?” Thus, inspired by my little sibling, I became a vegetarian (unfortunately, K started eating meat again as a teenager).

Meanwhile, Eddie grew up to be big, handsome, and strong. A few weeks after he had celebrated his first birthday, dad told us of a weird request from the breeder—would we lend Eddie to them to be mated with Elsa?

“ELSA??” I almost screamed in shock, “but she’s his MOTHER!”

“Ya,” replied dad, “but they say it doesn’t matter when it comes to dogs.”

I was disgusted to the core! The very thought of persuading a mother to have sex with her son—irrespective of the species—was sickening. Thankfully, my parents felt the same and refused.

In the coming years, we would receive many other such “proposals”—along with offers of “dowry”—from the *owners* of German Shepherd bitches in heat, asking us to lend Eddie to them.

To be continued…