Dr George John

“If having a soul, means being able to feel love, loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans” – James Herriot.
James Herriot was an illustrious British writer and veterinary surgeon and his renowned semi-autobiographical works was adapted for television, in a British TV series called “All creatures great and small”. Herriot’s works were written with great sensitivity describing many different kinds of incidents and circumstances involving interactions between humans and animals.
Animals have no voice. They can’t ask for help. They can’t ask for freedom and protection. It seems logical therefore that humans act as their voice. It turns out that man is not the only animal that seeks freedom. The meaning of life for animals too is a life of freedom. “To be free is to live in a way that enhances the freedom of others” said Nelson Mandela. My wife and I live with our four year old pet Dachshund and we know that animals know more than we think and think a great deal more than we know.
Animals may be different to humans but that does not make them lesser than us. But animals are not brethren to humans, nor are they underlings. They are the other and they too are caught up in the same net of time and space of life just as we humans are. Animals are born as who they are but they seem to live with greater peace than people do. It is humans and not animals that are messing up the world but although animals have fewer rights, they certainly have a right to be here and share the world with us. The late Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia said “It is easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked”.
It is an unmistakable fact that there exist a bond between humans and animals. The nature and merits of the bond between humans and animals first started to be studied in late 18th Century in York, England with the establishment of a not-for-profit charitable organisation called The Retreat (commonly called the York Retreat) and it provided for the humane treatment of mentally ill. The human-animal bond began as an extension of the compassionate care of the mentally ill, by having patients with mental illnesses, care for farm animals. This was the application of the theory that the combination of animal contact and productive work facilitated the rehabilitation of the mentally ill. By the late 1800s French surgeons found that by getting patients with neurological disorders to ride horses, improved their motor control and balance and were less likely to suffer from bouts of Depression. Around the same time, the American middle classes with Victorian values started using animals to help children socialise. At first it was purely as a gender process as they believed that only boys had the innate tendency towards violence and they found that companionship with animals helped them to develop kindness and empathy. Over time however, pet keeping became gender neutral. There soon developed a degree of anthropomorphism in the animal-human bond with the projection of human qualities on to animals.
In the 19th Century, German neurologists found that seizure frequency was reduced in epileptics who had contact with pet cats and dogs. The experience with horses during the conflicts in the First World War taught us to expand the health benefits of animal contact with humans because animals appeal to the fundamental human need for companionship, comfort and feeling of security.

Animals have a unique ability to bring out empathy in us as they inspire us to reveal our deep need for companionship and love which might otherwise be kept hidden.

Since the 1980s neuroscientists established beyond doubt that with animal contact humans are able to reduce symptoms of stress/anxiety, blood pressure, heart and respiratory rates. It also became known in psychiatric scientific circles that when a pet animal died, humans experienced pretty much the same grief reactions as when a close human died. The natural affection that humans feel for animals can be favourably compared with our affection for our children. We humans impulsively care for and help our children and both children and animals portray an innocence that compels us to want to protect them. Pet animals like small children seem to love us for who we are with zero expectations. Pet animals are always happy to see us, no matter how grumpy we might feel that day. That is what unconditional love looks like. Even when your boss yells at you, the boy/girlfriend, husband or wife fight and break up with you or the car breaks down on your way to an important meeting, when you get home the pet dog/cat comes and rub against you with their adoring eyes wagging its tail or purring contentedly. Animals touch the most intimate parts of our hearts, our need for nurture, protecting us and fulfilling our need for companionship and love.
And yet there is a basic irony in the human-animal bond. The routine and daily slaughter of millions of cattle, chicken, pigs and other animals for food doesn’t seem to faze us. How is it that we feel empathy when larger wild animals like elephants, lions and dolphins are wantonly killed for sport and profit when millions of cows, calves, chicken and other docile, harmless animals are slaughtered, leaves us unmoved? There are valid psychological reasons for this. First we must account for the subconscious influence pop and consumer culture plays in forming our attitude. Think of the thousands of pet movies we have all watched from Lassie, Mobydick, Lady & the Tramp etc., in which dogs, cats and aquatic animals are portrayed with human qualities. In them, these animals talk to each other, fall in love and dream of a future just as we humans do. And further the psychological principle called “collapse of compassion” explains why we care less when we watch more tragedy around us, because it makes us immune to it. But yet, even when we may not feel moved enough to feel the requisite levels of compassion by the awareness of millions of humans living in extreme poverty, the story of a single starving child living in the street without medical care, makes us want to help. Empathy is not what all it is cracked up to be when reality is larger and more diverse than we realise. Animals have a unique ability to bring out empathy in us as they inspire us to reveal our deep need for companionship and love which might otherwise be kept hidden. Thus paradoxically animals free us to be fully human.
The spooky Italian folklore of Saint Francis of Assisi and Gubbio the wolf illustrates it further. According to legend, the town of Gubbio in Umbria was terrorised by a fearsome wolf until it was tamed by the legendary monk whose life is the epitome of self-denial for the betterment of others. The wolf attacked livestock and began to kill and maime the townsfolk and when it rushed towards the saint with unsheathed claws, he is said to have merely prayed unafraid and made the sign of cross, whereupon, the beast calmly trotted up and put its head in the saint’s hands.
Whether or not this story is real or apocryphal and disregarding the truthfulness of the account, Saint Francis is said to have addressed the wolf as “Brother Wolf” and promised to feed the animal if it in turn ceased attacking the townsfolk. True to his word and realising the primary problem being that the animal needed feeding, the saint is said to have faithfully fed the wolf every day for the next two years until it died and is believed to have been honourably buried in the Abbey.
In his poetry “Los Motivos del Lobo” (motives of the wolf) in 1913, the Nicaraguan poet, Ruben Dano concludes that human desires are darker than that of the beast. We all have a wolf within us and the question is to what extend are we able to tame our own ravaging wolves. There is much to be learned from our own lives as our actions reflect our needs, which may not always be out of malice, but rather from our hunger and fear.
Much like human bonding between family members and sporting teams, a bond is formed between animals and humans when a nurturing and caring pattern is established. It was while forming the Delta society – a society dedicated to understanding the relationship between animals, humans and the environment in the 1970s that Drs Leo Bustad and Michael McColloch first coined the term “Human-Animal bond”. Since then academic research like that of Beck & Katcher in 1996 has firmly established the increasing number of benefits and future directions of this special relationship between humans and animals. Human-Animal bonding is a mutually beneficial and dynamic relationship. This interspecies friendship between people and animals is influenced by behaviours essential to the health and wellbeing of both. It encourages positive social interactions, especially physical touch and non-judgemental relationship. But it also works from the inside out by changing the neurochemistry and thus creating positive physiological, psychological, emotional and behavioural benefits.