I love dogs. I grew up with dogs who became part of our family, so it was no surprise to anyone that I got a dog when I moved away from home to Philadelphia. My husky, Annika, became my sidekick, and it has been great to have her company and an excuse to explore a new city with her. Dogs have been shown to improve your mood, make you more active, and help you make friends. They also serve in vital roles as service animals to our police force and our armed forces. They even made headlines as they searched for bodies in the recent London fire. To borrow a phrase from the popular Twitter account, We Rate Dogs, “They’re good dogs, Brent.” (If you don’t catch that reference, check out its awesome back story).
But our cultural obsession with dogs can lead to some pretty dark places. When asked whether they would save their dog or a foreign (human) tourist, 40 percent of people said they would choose their dog. That number drops to 10 percent when the choice is between their dog and their best friend—which is still appallingly high. I didn’t realize that the fact that a human life is more valuable than an animal’s life would be something difficult for people to grasp, but with stories like Harambe the Gorilla and the hunter Theunis Botha, it’s apparent that far too many people would save the life of an animal instead of a human, and some would go so far as to celebrate the death of a human when it was caused by an animal.
Source: Millennial Pet Owners: Stop Calling Yourselves ‘Dog Moms’ – Acculturated