The Art of Natural Dressage

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 1:37 pm 
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Rita, I must now ask you to change your message.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 1:40 pm 

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OK, that was my last shot.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 2:31 pm 
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My last try as well, as you do not want to change your post Rita:

Quote:
Bella - once again I enter a plea to consider the helpless animals that must be slaughtered so we can have carnivorous companions.

We already have these companions and they have just as much the right to their basic needs as the preys they feed on, as is their nature.

Quote:
There are well formulated vegan dog foods on the market which at least offer the possibility of offsetting our unfairness in this respect.

How about the unfairness to dogs and cats who get just as ill on vegan food as horses would get on being fed meat?

Quote:
The idea that what dogs' near relatives have evolved to eat may give us a clue as to dogs' "natural" diet

Evolve? Evolution does not take place in decades, Rita. It takes place in millions of years. Dogs have only been eating grains and sorts since the 1960. Kibble was invented by large multinationals to get rid of excess used in shampoos etc. Since then cats and dogs have started suffering typical ilnesses and their general maximum age has come down with years!

Quote:
but when we see that they can flourish and live long healthy lives* on a different régime without compromising the lives of other animals, surely it's worthwhile balancing the scales of justice a bit?

Dogs and cats do not flourish on commercial (and vegan) food. 95% of dogs die prematurely of cancer, 98% of the cats die prematurely of kidney failure. We have simply grown accustomed to cats and dogs not reaching their full age anymore and having constantly the same health issues. Just as people find it normal that horses nearly never reach 30 and get lame with 12 years etc.
It’s an exception if dogs and cats get old on anything other than meat, just like the oldest man in the world smoked all his life. Does that make smooking healthy?

Quote:
whe
Being "natural" isn't everything - humans have shifted the equilibrium of nature so far out of whack that we are now left with some very difficult ethical decisions to make, but they must be faced. It is not enough to try to idealise the lives of animals under our direct protection and ruthlessly exploit those we don't see.

I agree, but feeding carnivores what their bodies are made to function best on and keeps them from harm is not about being a purest natural. It’s is about what works best for them. The same with my choice for AND and bitless. It’s not about being against anything or being a purest. It’s about what works best for the horses.

Now in only the last 4 years I have seen over 50 cats and dogs in my practise, who were about to die and no vet could help, revived completely because of changing to a carnivore diet (my 4 cats included and I fed vegetarian biological against animal tested kibble!!). I am not just speaking out if thin air here, why would I, I am a vegetarian after all.
Now as people here are really concerned with the welfare of their animals I spread this information so more carnivores can benefit just as herbivores can benefit from the info here.

Again, Rita, if you want to start a subject with tips on how to improve the life’s of the billions of bio-industry animals, please do so.
But in my opinion we should not deprive one animal of his basic needs in sake of the other. We should strive to increase all animals wellfare and make sure they receive what comes natural to them.

In Holland and Belgium, each year, billions of meat that could not be sold because it was not ‘beautiful enough’ was burned! Now it is used to feet carnivores which get healthy, don’t get animal tested food and chemical medicine anymore. Farmers nearby tell me they make a better living now and have to slaughter less animals!

What is even more is that many people who ride bitless and offer their horses a more natural lifestyle and voice, feed their carnivores the meat leftovers of society, stop using animal tested products and become vegetarians themselves!
For if one starts thinking about one thing, one starts thinking about the rest.

Now, everyone, if questions about the subject of carnivore diet, please ask, Ester and I will be happy to answer. :)

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:23 pm 

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"My last try as well, as you do not want to change your post Rita":

I took you to mean changing my overall message, and that I should cease posting on this topic: it's true that I have said everything I can, and we are now repeating ourselves: it is ethics versus expediency, and we know there is no end to that. I have said what I felt I should and nothing new is emerging - I will not repeat myself further.

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:50 pm 
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Indeed, sorry for explaining myself so poorly. I meant adjusting your post to our house rules.

And you do not have the cease posting on my account.
As long as you can stick to the intend of the topic and accept that we do not all have to view the world in the very same way nor have to live by the same principles.
It's never black & white is it? It's always grey... or so I think. :)

I completely understand where you are coming from, I actually thought the same years ago. Wish you could have the same for my reasons. The reasons I have explained, I felt are completely dismissed by you. Where as I took the things you had to say very much to heart.

Having seen so much agony amongst cats and dogs including my own, and bringing them letterly back to live, had me change my mind. Or better my perception of what is right and wrong.

I think a lot about these things. Lately I been thinking a lot about plants and trees. I eat them, we have them burning in our fire place. I sit 'on a tree' as we speak...These too are living beings fightig for survival. Is a plant less then an animals? How ever we deal with life and death, to me the issue is whether we feel we remain as pure as possible as to the actions we take. With that I mean that we do what we feel is true and pure in our hearts. If we have no doubt and can look at ourselves smiling in the mirrow, all is as it should be :)

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 5:31 pm 

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Here is Leonardo da Vinci on the subject of plants;

"Though nature has given sensibility to pain to such living organisms as have the power of movement, – in order thereby to preserve the members which in this movement are liable to diminish and be destroyed, – the living organisms which have no power of movement do not have to encounter opposing objects, and plants consequently do not need to have a sensibility to pain, and so it comes about that if you break them they do not feel anguish in their members as do the animals."

–– MSS. H 60 [12] r of the Library of the Institut de France

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 6:09 pm 
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I don't want to inflame anything here, but I did want to point out that while lovely, daVinci's quote reflects a philosophy of several hundred years ago.

If you look at the latest research into plant neurobiology, there is an increasing awareness that plants have far more sophisticated responses to the world around them than we'd assumed. We are at the very beginnings of understanding that 'other' doesn't mean 'less' -- your arguments, Rita, are passionate and compassionate about not assuming dominion over animals because they are 'other.'

I would argue that the same is true of plants. And of microbes. And viruses.

My friend the electrical engineer would argue the same is true of electricity -- after working with it and studying it for 30 years, he is convinced it has a kind of awareness and intelligence (and actually is fairly convinced at some point that we will realize that we have been enslaving it).

I have another friend who is a geologist who believes much the same thing about rocks.

My point?

Actually, there are two:

The first is that there isn't one way to perceive this, and there is not one specific moral high ground here. I think Josepha's request to you about this, Rita, was not about not posting or not having your opinions, but an effort to ask you to step back and recognize that they are just that -- your opinions. And that there are many other opinions and belief systems about this that are equally valid that may be very different from yours.

The second is that we truly don't know the answers. We are at a moment of time with a particular set of insights and understandings about how the world operates. We make the very best decisions that we can based on our world understanding and value systems, and work to challenge our own perceptions. But we don't have the answers.

Hope this is helpful,

All the best,
Leigh

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 6:58 pm 
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Wow, Leigh, Why can't I explain things like that? :ieks: :funny:

Oh I love Leonardo. He also was a vegetarian, but I do not believe he had cats and dogs eating vegetables :funny:
What plants and trees experience we shall not know for now. It got me thinking years ago when I saw a huge fire in a pallet factory and the trees around it all turned away from the fire! They were really bend! :ieks:
The heat would have done in fact the exact opposite!

Also, scientists have meassured hormonal activity between plants. For example, if one tree gave off a certain 'scent' when he was attacked by a swarm of insects, all the other trees in the neigbourhood copied the 'behaviour' at once! Which makes the swarm take a hike so to speak.
But we are toooo off topic for words now. From critter meal to plant psych... Maybe in 50 years we'll have a AND 'plants' section 8)

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 07, 2010 9:56 pm 

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Leigh wrote:
I did want to point out that while lovely, daVinci's quote reflects a philosophy of several hundred years ago.

It's meant for interest, Leigh, not as a clincher - although in many cases I've seen the antiquity of far more dubious statements being claimed as a warrant. :ieks:
I, too, have friends with varying beliefs, but I do not find it necessary to agree with them - I cannot see how this affects the case. Nor can I see how vague speculations about the sentience of rocks and microbes excuse us from attending to the consequences of our dealings with beings whom we know right now to have sentience.
Leigh wrote:
but an effort to ask you to step back and recognize that they are just that -- your opinions. And that there are many other opinions and belief systems about this that are equally valid that may be very different from yours.
If someone produces a valid argument which makes me think it's ok to deprive other species of their lives for non-essential purposes, I shall be most interested to hear it: so far, none has been forthcoming. Opinions are not just things which sleet through our heads by chance, they are (or should be) the best take on reality we can come up with - no, we don't have a final answer - we don't even have a final question, but if we accept every idea that presents itself as equal to any other, we shall never get anywhere: the opinion of the bullfighter has equal force to that of the abolitionist.........It's not a question of getting one's opinion to predominate, it's a question of building solid advances in understanding.
We have an epistemic duty to try to get things right: I repeat, speculation about how we might act if certain things turn out not to be as we currently think in no way absolves us from behaving well right now in ways we do understand.
I did my best to end this thread, on which I seem to be the only one on the abolitionist side of the fence, several posts ago but I will include here the encapsulation of the abolitionist line of thinking which I sent to someone not long ago on another issue: if anyone can relieve me of the moral responsiblity I feel inherent in this argument by actual counter-reasoning, I shall be delighted to hear from them.
Rita

"Kant developed this basic moral intuition into a rule for moral decision making: take decisions on your actions which you would be content to see made into universal rules - i.e., you yourself and your social group/loved ones would be subject to the effects of your rule.

The philosopher John Rawls developed this idea still further with his concept of the "veil of ignorance" - you are to imagine yourself behind as veil of ignorance as to conditions "outside" and you yourself do not know to which section of the society out there you belong. Therefore moral decisions made on the basis of the interests of one group or another (race, gender, class...), which are binding outside the veil, may well end up applying to yourself and your own group, and should clearly not be made on the basis of some group interests to the disadvantage of others. What is an illogical decision (because you might be deciding against your own interests) inside the veil is immoral outside.

Moving right along, accordingly, Mark Rowlands extends the possible identities behind the veil, to include species as well as exclusively human groupings (to do this you have to decide whether other species have "interests", which is another argument, but I will take it as a given here). Behind the veil you do not know what sort of creature you are at all - so if you decide that, for example, people with an IQ of less than room temperature should not be allowed to have children, that will be the rule everyone has to abide by - and you may turn out to be in there; or, if you decide that sheep should be handy sources of protein for a more powerful species, you may turn out to be a mountain lion - in which case you win, or a sheep, in which case you lose, or a human. Obviously in the first and last cases, your decision pays off in the practical sphere - but in the second, it turns out to have been an illogical decision, because it has terminated your life interest - what is illogical behind the veil is immoral in front.

Applying this to (the case at issue), we can see that the scenario could only be described as a moral one if it applied to all species. If we decide - what I have taken above as a given, but am prepared to argue - that any sentient being has proper interests; staying alive, for example, avoiding pain, resisting removal of young, carrying out evolved behaviours etc: we cannot cut across these interests to serve anything but actual self-preservation without incurring the charge of acting out of capriciousness, avoiding by sheer power tactics the consequences of decisions which, if applied to our own group, would be agonising, lethal, or both. Whilst other species are deemed chattel property of humans, human interests (for play, therapy, food, covering, research...) will always be given priority, as was the case with human slavery. The scenario I have sketched above gives us a tool to see that what we are really doing in relation to animals is avoiding the consequences of immoral decision-taking by sheer dominance - bullying, if you like - hiding from ourselves (with blarney about "welfare", "kindness to animals" "good owners") the fact that our behaviour is not consistent with real, impartial morality, but rather follows a group-dominant, species-ist line of sticking to our interests and ownership privileges at all cost - including illogicality, which is bad for the brain.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:24 am 
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Rita, I must ask you please to stop now.

This is not the place for a categoric argument on any side of the fence -- it is inappropriate on this forum. Period.

People were making an effort to acknowledge the obvious intensity of your beliefs even when if they didn't agree with you. No one, myself included, was trying argue with you about the merits of your beliefs or provide counter arguments to them. I think any number of people here could mount equally passionate arguments about their belief systems around this; no one has chosen to do this because they are trying to be respectful of the expectations and the focus of this forum.

Josepha simply asked you to shift your post so it would better reflect the AND construct of owning our own beliefs and opinions rather than stating anything as absolute truth. I was simply making an effort to help you understand that your rigidness was not appropriate here.

You are welcome to own, hold, and celebrate your opinion. What you are not welcome to do here is suggest that it is truth with a capital T that trumps all other people's perceptions of truth. You don't need to accept any idea as being equal to all others in your own world view. However, here at AND, the expectation is that you understand that everyone here has the right to the equality and validity of their ideas in their world view. I hope you can understand the difference.

Thanks,
Leigh

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:17 pm 
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okay, Rita. You think that cats and dogs should be deprived of carnivor nutrition in favor of herbivores who are kept by humans and are slaughtered? Okay. That is your opinion and you have the right to have it.

I say, we must not feed animal tested, chemical food nor vegan food to carnivores but give the left overs of herbivores that humans will not eat and else simply gets burned.
I also say that in my view humans should be vegetarians as they do not need meat. Carnivores do. That is my right.

Other people will have different views.

You say you are a scientist, yet you claim a carnivore should eat vegan?

You say we should not live with cats and dogs because they need meat or else feed vegan.

So, if we can conclude that a carnivore needs meat, like a herbivore needs plants, what should we do with the carnivores that live with us now? Simply make them ill by feeding them plants? throw them out? Kill them?

You can not see past your own judgement, alas. How sad it makes me. What if because of the things you said in this topic lots of cats and dogs stay on the animal tested poiseness kibble?
That is what I mean. It's like when someone wants to start bitless riding and you say to them: you should not ride nor own a horse at all.
Is that going to help the horse in question you think? That person is going to turn away from the whole bitless issue!

I am now going to split this topic to remains helpful to carnivores. We can be helpfull to herbivores in an other topic. It is not one or the other you know. But you will have to accept just as much that the world knows carnivores, as accepting that water streams down hill, I am sorry. I know it is not the way you'd like the world to be.

Regards,

Josepha

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 2:34 pm 
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I wanted to split the topic with the messages and discussion with Rita to a new thread in the AND lifestyle section with subject 'discussion on keeping carnivores'

But every time I flip to a new page my selection is lost... help please? :blush:

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 3:57 pm 
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Josepha wrote:
But every time I flip to a new page my selection is lost... help please? :blush:


I have split the topic. To avoid the problem with the lost selection you can display all posts in one page by setting "Posts per page" to 0. If you want some of the posts from the other thread to be merged into this thread or vice versa, just tell me which ones and I will change it. :smile:


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 4:01 pm 
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no, it's perfect, thank you Romy!!! :kiss: :cheers:

Well Rita, now you are free to spill your guts here :)
just keep the house rules in mind, won't you :)

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