Dogs are also Buddha-like
Dogs that show remarkable loyalty and save their masters often become Taoist deities. The receivers of Chinese offerings. The Chinese worship loyal dogs for their moral rectitude. In this social value system, if men aren't loyal, they aren't even as good as dogs. When representatives for the World Society for the Protection of Animals came to Taiwan they wanted to visit the Shipa Wangkung Temple because no dogs in the West are so exalted.
A folk belief holds that dog's blood will ward off evil and keep away bad spirits. It is said to be much more effective than the blood of other animals because dogs have more spirit. It's similar to how the ancient Chinese thought that the turtle had supernatural powers of prophecy. As a result, they made divination blocks out of turtle shells, and carved half of the ancient oracle bone scriptures on them as well.
The Buddhist teachings of "protecting life" and "freeing life" have had a big impact on the Chinese, which is why academics hold that it is more difficult to control stray dogs in Taiwan than in the West.
In the six tracks of reincarnation, man and animals are neighbors, on the third and fourth tracks respectively. Hence, dogs can be reincarnated as people and people can become dogs. Because people and all animals including dogs alike have desires, alike suffer pain, and alike are self-centered, their wisdom and wants are very similar, and there is no basic difference in their natures. From this has derived the idea that freeing animals is good, causing stray dogs to appear in Chinese cities very early on.
In the Song dynasty, business and commerce prospered but city sanitation controls were not as strictly enforced as they had been in the Sui and Tang dynasty capitals of Changgan and Luoyang when the central government had more power. In the painting, "The Shang River on Tomb Sweeping Day," dogs are found in twos and threes amid the hustle and bustle of the Song capital of Bianjing, serving as a decorative counterpoint to the urban prosperity. Except during the massive campaigns to kill dogs in the mainland after 1949, over the course of history the dogs and cats that Chinese couldn't afford to raise were rarely killed.
It's just now that the urban scale is even bigger, the living environment more crowded, and roads ever busier with traffic, city living isn't suitable for stray dogs. The life of a dog roaming about the city is a frustrating one, and the Buddhist teaching of "freeing life" is a poor excuse for abandoning dogs to the streets, because stray dogs lead a life that seems worse than death. Today the problem has come to a point where it requires strict controls. People can no longer fool themselves about this problem by saying that "to live in misery is better than to die in peace."
From tool of production to trusted friend
The growing numbers of strays make clear how dogs have moved toward awkward extremes of status in modern society.
With the rise of industrial society, the dog took on new meaning for humanity. In a prosperous and busy society where relations between people are nervous and distant, the dog for most people is no longer a "useful" tool. It has shed its functionality and along with other pets taken the role of psychological trustee, providing for people's spiritual needs and serving as a "social lubricant."
The dog has once again taken a precious place in people's lives, like it had in hunting societies. Now that Taiwan is developed, the number of children per family is declining, to the point where some couples aren't even having children. And the children and grandchildren people do have are often anxious to flap their wings and leave the nest. Dogs, who aren't very particular about their masters, make ideal companions for many people.
Great numbers of dogs are pets, serving as spiritual companions. People are beginning to give their dogs birthday parties and enjoy the happiness of a family life with them. Some people are even leaving large inheritances to their beloved little pooches. In England, 8% of dog owners have insurance for their dogs.
On the other hand, there are more and more diseased strays roaming the urban landscape and rummaging through garbage to find food, prolonging their lives only temporarily in the streets and alleys.
Chuang Po-he, an ethnologist, believes that although dogs' relationships with the ancients were based on their utility, because people treasured and protected their resources, they would often hold a deep affection for their dogs; whereas today, dogs have become consumer goods whose value people manipulate. The market for dogs is highly speculative: The new hot breeds fall from favor as quickly as they rise, and values can soar or plummet. With breeders adopting herd-like instincts, dogs are propagating in profusion, so that supply often exceeds demand. Or sometimes dogs' masters no longer find their pets any fun. Either circumstance can lead to dogs being abandoned. Modern people have extended the concept of disposability to their pets, resulting in various bizarre phenomena.
Over the last few years, akitas have been bred to an overabundance and their value has plummeted. On college campuses, on Yangming Mountain, even on mountain slopes with an elevation of 1000 meters or more, you can find stray akitas. Wang Li-ling, the head of the Stray Animal Home, says, "Whatever breed is in fashion today will be roaming the streets in great numbers two years from now."
As the market for large dogs has crashed, dog sellers have pulled something new from their bag of tricks: They've imported growth suppression injections, to keep the puppies of large-breed dogs small forever, turning great danes into puny danes. And because dogs so injected take up less space and are cuter and more compliant, they fetch a higher price too.
In need of laws
Dogs are different from wild animals that constantly face the crisis of keeping the species going. Dogs, though free from fears about their species dying out, have to deal every day with human crises.
Animal lovers speaking on the dog's behalf can't use the same arguments that they use for animals facing extinction. But today, when there is a greater emphasis on morality and humane treatment of other living beings, many countries are hard at work creating animal protection laws in the hope that in addition to wild animals, the pets with whom people have ever closer relationships, livestock and other animals that serve economic functions can also have legal protection. Humans will never stop eating and using animals, but some of the pain and hardship can be eliminated from how they use them. Such laws could also prevent unnecessary abuse.
While animal lovers today have no way to ban dog races in Western societies, the laws governing such racing should grow stricter as opposition to racing grows. They could, for instance, prohibit the use of injections to force already injured dogs to race.
As for dog meat, Huang Hui-pi, an associate professor of veterinary medicine at National Taiwan University, says that there is no way to ban the eating of dogs outright, but as long as people are raising dogs to be butchered, the law can at least prevent the process from being too cruel.
A fierce look and a gentle heart
The I Ching says that "dogs have fierce exteriors that can stop intruders, but gentle hearts."
The dog isn't man's slave but rather his compliant and gladly servile friend, wagging his tail whichever way his master wanders, showing man limitless love and loyalty.
It is a virtually unchallenged axiom in both the Orient and the Occident that the dog, who has walked beside man through history, is "man's best friend." Yet since man walked through the wilderness hunting game, it seems that not a single society has been a wholehearted friend of the dog. Does the tragedy stem from the dog picking the wrong companion way back when?
[Picture Caption]
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Dogs are loved by men and women both East and West. What a cool image one cuts taking doggie for a joy ride in a moment of leisure! (photo by Vincent Chang)
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Like most peoples, the Chinese--whether court officials or common folk-- have always had dogs in their lives. The above Tang dynasty print, entitled "Fun in the Palace," is from the National Palace Museum collection. The photos below were rephotographed from Chinese Popular Prints.
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Napping on a soft-as-velvet sofa--what a life! Many dogs in Europe are regarded as the family's coddled daughter. (photo by Vincent Chang)
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Culinary habits are long in changing. Many Asian ethnic groups today still eat dog meat. The photo shows the "Dog Meat Festival" celebrated by the Buyi people of Guizhou on the sixth day of the sixth lunar month, when Buyi gather to feast. (photo by Lin Tien-fu)
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Dog racing is very popular in Europe and America, and a frequent target of international conservation group attacks. (courtesy of the Life Conservationist Association)
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Dogs are man's trusted helpers. They can help guard the house and serve as partners in the hunt, and emotionally they provide their owners with great tenderness. (photo by Vincent Chang)
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Today dogs can even have a cloth band tied around their bellies and hit the streets to accompany their owners at protest demonstrations.
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In canine funeral rites, biscuits, fresh flowers and toys are placed beside the deceased's mortal remains. Up in Heaven, does he know of his owner's heartfelt sentiments?
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At Taipei County's Shihpa Wangkung Temple, offerings are made to a dog which, refusing to the bitter end to leave his master, was buried with him.