The Brown Dog Affair

Posted on by Ānandajoti

I came across this fascinating piece of campaigning history the other day on the Wikipedia and thought to share it. When I was 11 years old I became vegetarian and have always been against cruelty to animals in any form. Even now, when I am otherwise so equanimous 😐 I still get upset at seeing animals ill-treated.

The article traces a remarkable piece of activism in the case of anti-vivisectionism in the early 20th century, it is a long piece but will be well worth your time to read, and gets quite exciting at times!

I embed it here live from the Wikipedia, which throws up a dozen lines of garbage of the beginning, but retains most of the original formatting, and so is preferable to copy&pasting.

~GetWIKI(Brown_Dog_affair)~

4 thoughts on “The Brown Dog Affair”

  1. Dear Bhante

    Thanks for the article on The Brown Dog affair. The fact that the dog was a mongrel is to my mind significant as it anticipates and looks fowrard to the way selected groups were classified as “sub humans” in the 1930s and 1940s leading to and sanctioning the atrocious medical experiments and genocide in both Europe and Asia. I do not think I am being far fetched in saying that there appears to be a similarity of cultural motivations and outlooks between this vivisection incident and those carried out on humans a few decades later.

    With metta

    Kah Choon

  2. A very relevant quote here is something CS Lewis once said:

    If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. ~ C.S. Lewis

    I think the background violence towards animals against which people conduct themselves on Earth is one of the major dehumanising factors we see.

    Recently I saw a video in which a 12-year old boy was being taught to slaughter an “infidel” in exactly the same way as he would a goat, and, sure, his practice in the one art makes the other so much easier.

    In this regard the Buddha once came across some children tormenting a snake while he was out on alms-round and after admonishing them he said this:

    He who, while seeking happiness for himself, harms with a stick
    (Other) beings who desire happiness, will not find happiness after passing away.

    I will put the discourse this comes from up for a full post in a week or two’s time.

  4. Great article!!!
    Thanks for the article on The Brown Dog affair.Keep it up…

    Thanks and Regards
    Cavan vets

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *