I know that there are human lobbies for having euthanasia as an option and I agree that there are circumstances in which it may be preferable to a certain painful death, but the problem is having the right safeguards in place to make sure it isn’t abused. Take dogs as a good example. The Pet Dogs Democratic Party is now campaigning against the use of euthanasia on dogs at the choice of humans. This is nothing short of compulsory euthanasia and therefore murder. How often is the family pet given the choice of whether it wants to die? Now I’ll grant that there are circumstances where it is the best thing for a pet as with humans, but with pets we just don’t have the safeguards. There should never be a circumstance in which a healthy or disabled but happy animal is put to sleep simply because it doesn’t have a loving home. Just think of the equivalent in human terms. Anyone who advocated the destruction of human beings just because they weren’t able to look after themselves would be thought barbaric, so why is it permissible for dogs?
This whole ‘best friend’ thing is only skin deep. When it suits you to want our faithful companionship then fine, but on a bad day, we’re just an inconvenience to be disposed of. The Pet Dogs Democratic Party will campaign for a welfare system to take care of all dogs who fall on hard times. We will set up hospitals and nursing homes for dogs. We will pay benefit to those dogs who can’t afford their keep and provide shelters for the homeless. Where we can, we’ll team them up with a human being and do a ‘two for one’ package, give a home to a homeless dog and get a free human thrown in.