If you look at other countries, you can see that things develop everywhere. In very poor countries many people don't have the money to have spoiled pets like we have.

Even in these countries you will find people who treat animals well and others who don't.

As soon as the countries develop and get wealthier their relationship to pets changes as well: some families will have pets and e.g. as a tourist you will find shops that sell pet food- something that will not be found in countries where the strays just live from table craps.

I was very happy when I saw a family in Thailand with their big yellow dog (typical Thai style- like a mix of boxers, labs, retrievers and GSDs) wearing a bandana round his neck

So it is a cultural thing: if in your own culture poor children cannot get basic medical care (e.g. parts of South East Asia where polio still exists) then you may be upset if you see overweight pets with diabetes lying on a custom made sofa.

On the other hand if you see a cat in Sri Lanka (as I have seen) that is thin like a skeleton and in fact starving your heart breaks. One of our authors lives in Bali and there are no vets who can perform surgery in cats (like neutering). They don't have the instruments. But even in these countries you can find people who help the animals. Simply because they have a heart.


The only possibility is the development of these countries. Their relationship to pets reflects the relationship our own grandparents had: to consider them as useful, to treat them well but not with love- and to live with the fact that they might die and to replace them. Now for us it is different. And it is a fact that we can afford it to be different. In this case our relative wealthyness (even the poorest of us Westerners is much richer than.......) could buy us the unique experience of sharing our feelings with an animal. Sometimes I call Filou "my little predator" and I just cannot believe how close two different species like he and me can be