The hot topic of the day in GA (and probably with all Falcons fans) has to be the animal cruely indictments for Mike Vick. It came up today at work and a friend made a very good point. Isn't the process of domesticating any animal cruel? By nature, a dog isn't meant to be house broken, a cat isn't meant to be declaw, horses aren't meant to be beast of burden, and so on.

I'm not saying that someone who chooses to own an animal is as cruel a person as one that would breed dogs for fighting, but they have to realize that it's not a natural thing. That they are keeping this animal to fill a void they have, not one that the animal has. Oh sure, your dog is excited to see you when you get home. But if all the humans on the planet vanished the pets would revert back to a feral state. So then you would have to think about all the lapdogs or declawed cats. They wouldn't be able to make it, because they wouldn't be able to defend themselves. So isn't that cruel, making something dependent on you?

Myself, I like being at the top of the foodchain, and I see the need to domesticate animals. But I realize that humans do it because we can, not because the animal wanted us to.