The Butterfy Effect: How Animals Make Us Better People

The day after giving a pet nutrition workshop at my local co-op, Weavers Way, I bumped into the manager of the store.

“I stopped in for a minute just to see how things were going,” Glen said.  “I wasn’t planning on staying, since I assumed a two-hour talk about dog food would be…”

“Boring?” I asked.

“Well, yes,” he admitted.  “But it turned out to be interesting–and fun!”

I had had fun, too, discussing the bizarre ingredients in pet foods and providing suggestions for healthier feeding options for pets, and I was telling Glen just as much when the woman standing next to him in the aisle piped up. “With so many hungry people in the world, including right here in Philadelphia,” she said, “I can’t understand how people spend so much time and energy thinking about animals.”

Whether or not she was intending to, she had pushed one of my most sensitive buttons. I’ve always been mad for animals: frogs and toads, dogs and cats, horses and elephants, you name it, and from the time I can remember, I wanted to be a veterinarian.  I plowed through grade school, college and vet school in single-minded pursuit of my goal.  It wasn’t until I graduated from vet school and entered the “real” world that I expanded my consciousness to include the plight of people.  Once I did, I was horrified–and sickened.  From illness to war to hunger to abuse, the problems facing humanity haunted me.  For many years, I thought I had made a mistake, that rather than practice veterinary medicine, I should have dedicated my life to alleviating the suffering of people.

The woman in the co-op left before I could gather my thoughts and respond to her.  But her words stayed with me, kindling my desire to address this topic.

I spend so much time and energy thinking about animals because I’m fascinated with and feel incredible gratitude for them.  The roles animals play in our lives are profound. Consider:

• The more we learn about nutrition for our pets, the more we learn about nutrition for ourselves.
• The more we learn about how vaccinations, pesticides and drugs affect animals, the more we learn about how they affect humans.
• The more we learn about the benefits of holistic health care for animals, the more we learn about the benefits for humans.
• The more we learn to treat animals with love, respect and kindness, the better equipped we become to treat all beings–our fellow humans included–with the utmost of compassion.

The paths of humans, animals and of our planet are intricately woven.  We do need to figure out how to relieve the suffering of our fellow humans.  But rather than detract from our ability to do so, animals can guide us in serving one another all the better.  I ask those folks who are not naturally drawn to animals to open their hearts to the gifts animals can bring to all of us.  To think of it like the butterfly effect: love begets love begets more love.  What could be more powerful than that?