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Teaching animal welfare in schools

I must congratulate Andrea Rapholthy the president of the animal shelter APASA here in Javea (Xabia). She has achieved the first that I have heard of within the EU of reaching an agreement with the town hall that animal protection, treatment, welfare and respect for all animals be include in the curricula of local schools. This is indeed a major step forward for animal welfare.

Such a groundbreaking agreement as this will mean that all children will learn how to treat and respect animals. Such lessons as these of understanding of animals will reduce the number of animals regularly abandoned and mistreated.

It has always been known and requested that the teaching of children is the best way of achieving animal awareness but nothing has really be pursued. We have had serving Police dog handlers visiting schools with their dogs but this has simply been a public relations exercise to show the kinder face of policing.
From my childhood days, most schools have always had teachers introducing animals as part of science or gardening subjects. The problem was that only those children interested in animals fed and cleaned them. Such duties placing children on a roster system only seemed to make the work a chore rather than learning about animal welfare. There was nothing actually done to teach all children about this important subject.

Most people would probably say parents should be teaching this but if we never taught them this in the first place how can they teach. Most people have only ever learned this subject from their own good or bad experiences.

We also have some problems in the way we are, the way animals are, and how we interact. We humans love to cuddle one another and this takes us back to our baby feeding days cuddled and comforted by our mother. This action makes us feel loved and secure. Watch any baby with a toy bear or a doll and how they love to cuddle it. Alas, a dog does not see this in the same way. This is in fact a dominancy signal, which some dogs will react aggressively against with devastating results. Yet, for us this is only a show of affection.

Take cats as an example. As kittens, they will knead with their front paws their mother whilst feeding. Even now, Ming who is sixteen still sits on my lap and will do this to me when she is happy and content. My only complaint is I wish she would retract her claws a bit more. Children may see this as anger by the cat and push it off their lap unless someone taught them that this was a contentment sign.

Trying to make us all have the same body responses is impossible but if we know about the areas of difficulties, we can compromise. Either we teach our dogs to accept that cuddling is just a human thing and nothing to be upset about or else teach children not to cuddle dogs.

One major problem is the way children treat toys and as they gradually progress into adults. Toys when new are fine until they loose their novelty and then discarded to the corner under the bed or into the bin. Watch a baby with a teddy bear and it will try to eat the eyes and pull as many parts of the body off as it can in its need to explore and understand the environment. Why they have to test toys to destructions has always been beyond me.

Look at the toys of today and how they are becoming more real and lifelike. This begs the question when do toys stop and animals as toys begin. It is important that toys are a way of teaching for the coming life. Girls liked dolls once upon a time though now we have toys suitable for both boys and girls. Boys like guns, cars, soldiers, space invaders etc. How we learn to use are toys helps make us what we are in later life.

It is for us as parents to look at the way children treat their toys and though they are lifeless, they must not treat them in an inhumane way because when eventually they have animals as pets they may treat them in the same way as they treated their toys.

It is sad that we hear of stories where children have been so cruel to animals in ways that is heart breaking. I heard of children feeding horses handfuls of grass with glass inside. Even when the children were told what they had done was wrong they could not comprehend the pain and suffering they had caused that resulted from their actions.

I learned the other day where a family with a small child and a mature dog heard screaming from upstairs. They rushed into their daughter's room to find their dog savaging her with blood everywhere. After taking, their daughter to the hospital on their return they took the dog to the vets to have him put to sleep. They asked the vet would he do an autopsy to see why a lovable dog should suddenly change into such an aggressive force. He replied there was no need for an autopsy, as the dog had no eyes. Their child had stabbed them out with a pencil.

Some children take this one step further and actually savagely attack other children like the Bulger case. How can children keep hitting a child with bricks just to try to stop him making noises? Fortunately, such occurrences are extreme and thankfully very rare. What is not a rarity are the ways some humans of all ages abuse or simply discarded animals when they loose their novelty value.

Summer time is one of the times of the biggest influxes of pets into shelters when owners simply abandon their pets in order they can go on holiday. Others will simply kill them using many horrific methods like drowning or hanging. How can anyone let a dog loose on a motorway and then drive off leaving it for other driver to find it or kill it by accident.

If we taught such people when they were children that both toys and then animals deserve respect, would such incidences reduce?

There seems to be an opinion with some people that animals do not have the same sort of feeling like humans. They think they do not feel pain in the same way as us. Many people see them as simply lesser beings. We now learn that it is a possibility that even plants feel pain but it is we just cannot hear their cries.

I have always had pets as long as I can remember and they always have shown me affection. I have had dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, hedgehogs and ferrets that all have shown pleasure in seeing and being with me.

I once had a carrion crow that had a broken wing. When it was able to fly again it eventfully returned to where we found it but it would still return each day for feeding. Only when I went on a school holiday for two weeks and the neighbour had even agreed to place food out for it, because I was not there it stopped coming back to my home. This to me proved food is not the only bond.

When I received a ferret from my brother-in-law so I could go hunting with him I knew that their nature was as simple killing machines. Just like foxes that will kill all the chickens in the hen house rather than leave some for tomorrow. Ferrets too will kill all the rabbits it finds even if it is not hungry. Who then would have thought that such animals make lovable pets?

In my early hunting expeditions, I kept Pooh (they do smell a bit) on a harness and line in order I did not loose him. I knew they were still feral animals and could live quite perfectly in the wild but I did not wish him to escape.

Unfortunately, with my lack of experience, Pooh crossed my line underground and he became trapped inside the warren. This required me to have to dig holes every 2 feet to track the line to find my trapped ferret.

Following many hours of digging, I eventually found his tail. I then dug the final hole and so not to injure him with my spade I broke through the last few inches of soil with my hand emerging into the tunnel. I then felt four very sharp fangs grip my finger. In that, moment all that I had seen of a television presenter bitten by a ferret flashed through my mind and even worse my hand was down a hole. How could I retrieve my hand with a ferret attached?

With all this fear, I then felt the ferret touch my finger with his tongue. This way he must have recognised me, and then he simply clambered up my arm into the daylight. He then jumped into my lap and ran round in circles whilst I took off the harness and line. He was looking like one very happy and relived ferret. Had he felt the end was nigh down in his tomb I do not know but it was obvious he was relived.

After this experience, I never used a harness and line again but Pooh always came back to me. I am certain my ferret showed my dog and I great affection as much as we showed to him.

These are just some of my many experiences with animals and know many other people have had countless similar experiences that illustrate the affection that animals can show to other species including humans if we only treat them with respect.

When this great achievement of Andrea Rapholthy becomes established here, I hope that the EU government can be persuaded to copy this throughout the European Community making it a major step forward in teaching animal welfare and hopefully this will reduce the number of animals ending up in the various shelters.

If we can teach all children how to properly care for animals, we are then teaching the pet owners of the future.

Following on from Andrea's success, I am building up a free library of dog training and behaviour books for anyone interested in reading them. I have now managed to obtain two copies of Be Your Dog's Best Friend by John Rogerson. Two dedicated teachers Dolores Palmer and Joyce Thurman have translated this from his 'adult' manuscript into a format suitable for younger readers. If you have any children who may benefit from reading these then please give me a call.

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