Which relationship do you have?

I read an article a while back about people and their relationships with dogs. These relationships fall into three categories: Humanist, Protectionists, and Dominionists.

Humanists - highly value their dogs and consider them to be companions - pseudo-people.

Protectionists - potentially vegetarians and value animals highly - not just as pets.

Dominionists - animals are separate and less important than people.

Humanists would be the type of dog-owners to dress their pets in clothes and pamper them with gifts, toys, and treats. In contrast, a dominionist would be the sort of pet-owner who leaves their animals outside and uses them for hunting or ranching - working animals rather than companions.

How do you think you fit into these three categories? Do you think there are other categories of pet-owners?

We don't have dogs, but even with cats we fit into the humanist category I think. We don't dress them up, but we certainly pamper them. They get a lot of treats and we talk to them as if they can understand us. (sometimes they seem to for sure!)

--Tammy

Comments

[Ingrid]

I don't have dogs, either, but I think this applies to cat parents, too. I'm probably mostly humanist (except for the dressing up part - I really don't like that and I would venture to say that most pets don't enjoy that aspect of being pampered!) and maybe a little protectionist. However, I don't consider animals "pseudo-people," I think they're spiritual beings in their own right, so definitely more than just pets, and even more than just companions.

[turtlecookie]

I'm probably somewhere between humanist and protectionist as well. I don't see my animals as pseudo-people, but I do talk to them and give them treats and see them as members of the family, and I do value animals highly and as spiritual beings. I found it interesting that people who have working dogs are considered Dominionists. I've not had a "working" relationship with my pets, and I can see that that would be a different relationship, but I can also see a relationship with a work animal as a partnership, which may not fall into any of the above categories. I also think Dominionship and Stewardship, while they may look different in some ways, also have some similarities. For instance, someone with a Dominion attitude may be more likely to have a factory farm than someone with a Stewardship attitude, who may be more likely to have an organic farm. Yet neither would treat their animals as pets. Of course, this discussion was originally about dogs and cats, not horses, cows, sheep, or pigs or other non-pet (traditionally) animals, so maybe that distinction is not relevant here. ;-)

Turtlecookie.

[jan]

I asked my dogs which I was and they voted for the first one.

[Dana]

I decided to do what Jan did...I asked my three dogs and they all replied, "Dogs? There are no dogs living here at this house...why on earth would you call us dogs?" So, I guess this makes me a humanist.