Animals as friends?

Can Animals Be Friends? – Blog

On the topic of animals actually being friends, I liked hearing the different opinions people had about the possibility of animals being a legitimate friend as qualified in our readings. We have addressed the emotion of Love; an emotion almost all people agree exists - even though it is difficult to define. Most would probably agree we can have true, deep love for our companion animals, especially dogs and cats - which we have domesticated and altered over centuries. By the definition we learned in class, some animals qualify as being able to be friends while others, not so much.

These animals like cats and dogs are why we have the sayings “mans best friend”. When an animal is able to give back in a form of love or a feeling of being accepted, they can become friends. Animals like gold fish on the other hand are different. They have no way of being able to reciprocate that love for you nor have the ability to rasp the concept of learning or becoming companions. This separates one species from another.

In my opinion, animals give unconditional love. Unconditional love is something we humans have a hard time comprehending. We have an infamous way of wanting something in return for our love and if we do not get it we tend to retaliate in one form or another. Animals on the other hand you can give them little attention or lavish them with attention and they will keep on sharing themselves with you.

Having a dog, I guess I can associate certain animals being friends more then others might. Zeus (my dog in my profile picture) gives unconditional love to myself. He has learned what is good and what is bad (like chewing up things that are not his). He also has a keen sense on when to comfort me when I am down or upset. His ability to show these kinds of things are, in my opinion, what sets animals who can be friends from those who cannot.