Claire Tillman's Presentation

First, Claire Tillman's method and motive of her humane education movement is excellent. It is so important for young people to learn about how to treat/care for an animal and what behavior is unacceptable. This all goes back to the original questions of the class: How should we treat animals, like people or lower than people. Are animals moral patients (some yes and some no, some non-human animals give more to their "owners" then owners to animal) or are they individuals (yes) or are "objects" (no)? Of course, parents teach children how to play with other children and not to hit, but when it comes to animals parents don't really sit down and say don't harm an animal because you think it is fun/funny. Claire is changing this, she is going into schools and telling children how to and not to interact with animals. While this may seem like something small and isolated, I believe Claire's statement that these session with her about animal cruelty can change a class room and the kids. I also agree that kids have a lot of power in a household, and can say we aren't caring for this animal the right way, let's make it better. This is going to start changing children's minds about animals and when they have children they will automatically pass along this message and the cruelty and abuse cases will go down. Maybe the children can't get their mom or dad to stop dog fighting, but he or she when they are older will not dog fight, and will have overall a more compassionate view of animals and will slowly change the view of animals. Maybe in five generations of this process, animal cruelty will be such an issue and have so much support that animal law can cover ALL animals and farm animals will start to be protected and respected. Claire also taught me some new things, I never really thought of animal hoarding as cruelty, but it most definitely is. When I thought of cruelty I thought of abuse and hurting not hoarding, but one person can help a lot of animals but there becomes a point when taking in more animals will be bad for all animals. So some animals do suffer as the cost of some getting better treatment, because it becomes bad for all if there are too many cats or dogs in one house. Claire is making a difference, and I hope someone can walk away from any of our tables at Pit bull Awareness Day or Earth Day and feel that they have been some how enlightened or changed.