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Temple Grandin: Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals
Temple Grandin, Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals
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- Author
- Temple Grandin
- Book
- Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals
I just finished reading this book and I found it to be wonderful. It's not a book exclusively about dogs, each chapter is about a different animal. It starts off with dogs and moves on to cats, cows, pigs, and eventually even lions, tigers, and monkeys.
I like the chapter on dogs because she spends a good amount of time pondering whether Cesar Millan is right with his ideas on dogs. She ends up basically expressing doubt about his particular ideas, but in some ways finds common ground with him. Cesar Millan says, and Temple Grandin believes that we need to look at an animal's way of feeling and expressing emotion to figure out how to treat them humanely. The chapter sets up the rest of the book with the idea that we need to try to understand what animals in captivity (including dogs) are feeling to give them a good life full of positive emotions rather than negative emotions.
She strikes out against those who say that animals don't have emotions by pointing out the obvious: these large mammals totally act and behave according to emotions. People who have something to lose by the way they treat animals are the ones who are pushing for the idea that they don't have emotions. But all you have to do is watch your dog for a few moments to see the emotions. She goes over the basic animal emotions and how they affect different animals, and if you're a dog owner, the whole book can be applied to dogs. Some things don't of course, but by the time you're done reading, you will really have a better idea of what your dog wants from life.
I should also say, that the book is easy to read, but it's also heavily footnoted and very academic. Everything she says is backed up by recent studies. She didn't just make up the animal emotions, she's taken them from studies done by well known and reputable researchers. She is a college professor herself and a very successful consultant for farms and ranches.
The book spends a lot of time talking about the treatment of livestock, which is actually really interesting. She talks about all the work she does to help businesses understand that treating their animals well not only helps the animals but will help the business make more money and help the environment. For instance, animals who graze maintain the prairies. Without them, the prairies turn into deserts which are very difficult to turn back into prairies.
She also talks about human issues. For instance she tells stories about how she works with some farms and ends up saving them thousands of dollars a week by treating the animals better. But then, after she leaves, for some reason they go back to treating the animals poorly even though they also lose the money by doing so. She even goes so far as to say some people just do not have the sensitivity to work with animals in a humane fashion and those people just need to be removed from the business by good management.
It's a fascinating book and I highly recommend it.