Warning: this journal entry has absolutely nothing to do with video games whatsoever. It is not cleverly worded and does not make humorous pop-culture references. That's nothing new for my journal, but what is new is that this time I wasn't even trying to be funny or relevant. You may want to leave now and just come back next time for more of my attempts at being entertaining.

Every day, each of us negotiates a series of contracts. There are the overt kind, like the employment contract between individuals and their employers, between lenders and mortgage holders, and then there are the implied contracts that are just as important and binding.

When you sit down in a restaurant, you are voluntarily entering an agreement that you will be served food and drink, after which you will pay the bill. More than that, you're entering an unspoken social contract with the server. They will act as your liaison to the kitchen, be attentive and accommodating, while you will be respectful and appreciative of their efforts.

Unfortunately, some people don't understand the social contracts that form our society. We've all known (or been on the receiving end of) bad tippers, rude customers, and other who don't understand the balance involved in social contracts. The worst contract of all to take lightly, though, is the one between humans and domestic animals.

For a very long time, human animals and nonhuman animals have allied themselves because our skills and personalities compliment each other. Dogs fit especially well with people, and its with dogs that I most often see the contract break down. You see, when a person makes the decision to join forces with an animal, its not like the purchase of a new coat... something to be shown off and then thrown into a closet and forgotten as soon as fashion or the weather changes. Choosing to share your life with an animal should be taken as seriously as getting married (actually, more seriously than most people take that) or adopting a child.

I bring all this up because I recently found out that a cousin of mine got a puppy and completely stopped paying attention to his older dog (Gus), because Gus wasn't cute anymore now that he'd grown up. Gus is actually pretty lucky, since most dogs in his position wind up in a shelter, then dead. My uncle has at least taken over Gus' care, so he's better off than many dogs that have "outgrown their cuteness."

I find the idea of seeing a living thing as a possession... as an accessory to be so appalling that I actually begin to choke if I try to verbalize it. Dogs understand the contract instinctively (and so should we, but we disregard instinct as lesser knowledge), and in return for food, shelter, and companionship, they'll give you their heart without reserve. It doesn't even take much... I've seen dogs barely alive on the scraps of affection they're shown that wouldn't hesitate for a second to step between their human and any danger that might confront them.

Our part of the contract is pretty simple... care for and protect the animal in the ways we can, just like they care for and protect us in the ways they can. We can make sure that Fido always has food and water, a place to sleep and most importantly, we can return their love. Just like adopting a child, adopting a dog adds a permanent responsibility to your life. If your child needed surgery, would you tell the doctor to give him a lethal injection instead, because it was too expensive?

Humans have lost much of our empathy, you see... drown it out by calling it primitive and unscientific. We can commit acts of disregard and carelessness on epic scales, and often not even notice. That's how we can look at animals as merely nonstationary property, because we can't empathize with them. We can't understand that they feel hunger, pain, loneliness and despair as well as humans, and don't enjoy it any more than we do. Because they can't tell us in our own words what they feel, we assume they don't feel anything at all.

Dogs, on the other hand, are great empathizers. They don't neeed to know why you're happy; they just get happy right along with you. If you're sad, they know it and usually won't leave your side, will even press against you as if to try to soak some of your sadness into themselves, share your burden.

Douglas Adams wrote this of dolphins: "Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason." Now look at ourselves and dogs, at who just naturally understands the nature of the relationship between our species and who uncaringly treats the other as property, and tell me: which ones are the dumb beasts again?