Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary

So the World Politics Class is over and I during the Month of may am taking a Class with the University of Redlands in Utah were we are learning about animal ethics and working with the animals at Best Friends Animal Senctuary near Kanab. They have cats, dogs, birds, horses, goats, and pigs. I've worked with all the types of animals here so far in my first week. I like all animals as long as they like me. It's that way with people too(well and agree with me about everything haha). Anyway For the Dogs there's a lot of cleaning involved of their cages and stuff I'm covered in mud right now. And when I say cages they have like fouty foot cages this is not a small shelter it's supposably 30 acres of dessert; over agrivated land that was cheep when it was founded in the 80s. The cats are clean up too but not so much and there is a lot of cuddleing and petting. The birds involve cleaning too (all the animals do but to different degrees). The birds are easy because you just sweep and pick up the paper towls throwing them away. The cats get swept and mopped and all. The dogs are really dirty needing cleaning inside and out and the outside is often muddy specially when they have pools to play in. I was cleaning pools today that's why I'm muddy. The horses since I did them in the morning we fed and mucked which is basically just poopscooping with a rake and a wheelbaral. So it's fun but it is best just to play with the animals. Most of them can be adopted out and they don't kill any of them no matter what thier conditions; old and such. The class which is two mornings a week is really interesting talking about the rights of animals and how they have a personality. It's really interesting because today we really talked about vegitarianism and why people do that because mass slaughter houses are really cruel. But I'm not a vegitarian because I say if animals are being treated so cruelly that's the people who are treating them cruelly's fault and I have just as much right to eat an animal as another animal does and other animals do eat each other. Plus we have the teeth for it so that's an indicator it's not just the tast we need it in some way. Probbaly not as much as we eat it now but most importantly for children. The whole vegan thing is hard too because cows that give milk are treated terably and the calfs that are produced in order to produce the milk are basically miserably without the mother yet children need the calcium for thier bones. So ultimatly changing my diet shouldn't be the solution but changing how animals are treated should be the agenda.