The way we treat animals is indicative of the way we treat our fellow humans. One Soviet study, published in Ogonyok, found that over 87 percent of a group of violent criminals had, as children, burned, hanged, or stabbed domestic animals.4 In our own country, a major study by Dr. Stephen Kellert of Yale University found that children who abuse animals have a much higher likelihood of becoming violent criminals.5
Studies of inmates in a number of U.S. prisons reveal that almost none of the convicts had a pet as a child. None of them had this opportunity to learn to respect and care for another creature’s life, and to feel valuable in so doing.
But these attitudes can be reversed, even in criminals. Heartwarming research has been done in which convicts nearing their release dates were allowed to have pet cats in their cells with them. The result? “Of the men who loved and cared for their cats, not a single one later failed as a free man to adjust to society.”6 This in a penal system where over 70 percent of released convicts are expected to return to jail.
The attitudes toward animals shown by the youngster at the science fair, and by the Soviet criminals when they were youths, are not at all unusual. We’ve all grown up in a system that condones such cruelty. Our public stance is basically that animals are ours to treat any way we wish, and that kindness to animals and sensitivity to them as fellow beings is an option some may choose if they want to, but it is no more incumbent upon us than being nice to plastic dolls.
This attitude toward animals has been given voice even by modern religious leaders, one of whom said the following of animals being slaughtered:
Their cries should not arouse unreasonable compassion any more than to red-hot metals undergoing the blows of a hammer, seeds spoiling underground, branches crackling when they are pruned, grain that is surrendered to the harvester, wheat being ground by the milling machine.7
For this religious leader, animals are not creatures who merit any sort of empathy. They are merely machines, bundles of reflexes and instincts, mechanical things with no feelings to speak of, objects that we can treat without qualm in any way whatever. This is a far cry from the attitude of Albert Schweitzer, who believed the following:
Any religion which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion…8 Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. 9
Toward the end of his long life, Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for dedicating his whole life to teaching that:
We must never permit the voice of humanity within us to be silenced. It is man’s sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.10
Dolphins to the Rescue
The official position of the Catholic Church has long been that animals don’t have souls. During a Church council in the Middle Ages a vote was taken on whether women and animals have souls. Women squeaked by. Animals lost.
One thing is sure. Yvonne Vladislavich would give you quite an argument if you tried to tell her animals don’t have souls. In June 1971, Yvonne was aboard a yacht that exploded and sank in the Indian Ocean. Utterly terrified, she was thrown into shark-infested waters. Then she saw three dolphins approach her. One of them proceeded to buoy her up, while the other two swam in circles around her and guarded her from the sharks. The dolphins continued to take care of Yvonne and protect her, until she finally drifted to a marker in the sea and climbed up onto it. When she was rescued from this marker, it was determined that the dolphins had stayed with her, kept her afloat, and protected her across more than 200 miles of open sea.11
And there’s more. On May 28, 1978, four fishermen became lost in a fog off the coast of Dassen Island, South Africa. They knew there were dangerous rocks in the vicinity, and they feared running into them because the fog had become so thick they couldn’t see where they were going. Then they became aware of a group of dolphins nudging and pushing the boat, forcing them to change course. Suddenly, through the fog, they saw sharp rocks protruding through the water. The rocks only became visible as they floated by them, and the fishermen realized at once that the dolphins had saved their lives. Meanwhile, the dolphins continued to push the boat along a course known only to them, until it reached calm waters. Then they swam away, evidently feeling their job was done. When the fog lifted, the men were flabbergasted to find themselves in the very bay from which they had originally set out early that morning.12
Man’s Best Friend at His Best
Human contact with dolphins is limited. In recent years, the animal with whom most of us have had the greatest contact is the dog. One doesn’t have to be a dog lover to recognize that these beings have provided enormous amounts of companionship, devotion, and loyalty to people over the years.
Television shows like Lassie and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin were not wholly contrived fantasies. They were dramatic representations of the loyalty, devotion, and intelligence of dogs. There are actually thousands of fully documented and independently verified incidents that make the adventures of Lassie and Rin Tin Tin pale by comparison.
One day in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1955, a man named Ken Wilson was trying to teach a horse to accept a saddle in his corral. Ken wasn’t at all concerned about his three-year-old son, Stevie, who he thought was playing at a neighbor’s. But what he didn’t know was that little Stevie had wandered off alone, fallen into a pond, and sunk to the bottom. The boy’s dog, Taffy, however, saw the disaster and immediately raced to the corral, barking uproariously and demanding Mr. Wilson’s attention. When the man ignored him, Taffy made a big show of charging into the pond, all the while continuing to bark at the top of his lungs. Then he raced back and nipped at the horse’s legs. Finally Mr. Wilson realized the dog was trying to tell him something and dismounted. Immediately, Taffy bolted to the pond, barking for the bewildered man to follow him. When Wilson got to the pond, he saw his little son’s red jacket floating on the surface of the water. Finally realizing what had happened, he dove headlong into the four-foot-deep water, found his unconscious son, and lifted him from the bottom. It was six hours before Stevie regained consciousness. But when he did, the first thing he saw was his little dog Taffy, sitting prayerfully beside his bed.13
Stevie is not the only child whose life has been saved by a dog. There are thousands of such cases, fully documented and verified.
One such child was two-year-old Randy Saleh, of Euless, Texas. Little Randy wandered away from home one day. When his parents noticed his absence and couldn’t find him anywhere, they called the police. But even a two-hour police search did not locate young Randy. The parents were becoming extremely alarmed, and when they noticed that the boy’s dog, a St. Bernard named Ringo, was also missing, they found themselves praying that the big dog was with their little son and was somehow protecting him.
Meanwhile, a man named Harley Jones had to stop his car for a traffic jam on a highway about three-quarters of a mile from Randy’s home. Getting out of his car, he asked other stopped motorists if they knew what the problem was. They told him the trouble was “caused by a mad dog in the road ahead.” Curious, Jones walked toward the head of the line of stopped cars to see for himself what was going on. What he saw was a St. Bernard, stationed resolutely in the center of the highway, barking wildly and letting no car move by in either direction. Jones saw the dog was protecting a little boy who was merrily playing in the center of the heavily traveled thoroughfare. The dog would stop any car that dared attempt to drive through the area and then would immediately rush back to the little boy and nudge him toward the side of the road. But the little fellow, thinking the