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April 2010: Should homo urbanis own dogs? There are many reasons why the answer to this question has to be no. Let's look at two of them.

For one, many humans are just not qualified to own dogs. Whenever I run, for example, in the foothills West of Reno, I meet humans with one, two, many dogs, who have no considerations for other humans. One of the worst examples is this woman walking there with three large dogs (the German Shepherd already made it around the corner). I was running up hill when the three dogs suddenly appeared running around a bend, behaving quite aggressively. I stopped, with the three dogs surrounding me. When the woman finally appeared, I asked her to call her dogs back. She looked at me with blank face. Absolutely no reaction whatsoever. She just kept walking. Finally, when she had passed me quite a bit, the dogs decided to follow her. They scared hell out of me.

Another more important reason: The Truckee Meadows probably could sustain altogether a population of a hundred coyotes, wolfs, and foxes, but certainly not a thousand. Today, the urban area of Reno-Sparks is home for at least 100,000 dogs and other large pets, adding substantially to the footprint of their owners in terms of food, space, greenhouse gases, waste, and pollution. In a long causal chain, having these pets is responsible for people in other parts of the world starving and dying - including many children. Isn't that a crime against humanity?

As emphasized by James Lovelock, it is not just the mere number of human beings that is a problem for Gaia, it is also the many pets they own. In numbers, worldwide, we enjoy the company of billions of pets, pets that the natural environment would not be able to sustain. It must be easy to see that this is a significant increase of the human footprint on the world, and the world's pet load in the end will amplify the changes we force onto Earth.


Photo by Hans-Peter Plag, April 25, 2010, Reno, Nevada, USA.

If you have a story, thought, or picture worth to be considered as story, thought or picture of the month, please feel free to inform me about it by sending an e-mail to hpplag@unr.edu.