Animals are our friends

As a child I always heard the statement that "animals are our friends." Perhaps this was why I always believed that they should be treated with love and care, since that's the way that I treat my friends and hope that my friends treat me. This is a particularly important creed that reemerged in my head after watching an episode of Animal Cops Miami on Animal Planet. While a humane law enforcement agent was rescuing a dog which had been abandoned, tied to a trailer and without any food or water, she noticed that some neighborhood children were watching her work. It was at that moment that she took the opportunity to speak to the children against animal abuse. The children seemed receptive to the agent's advice. It was then that I thought of my childhood, surrounded by my grandparents' many goats, chickens, cats, rabbits, dogs and birds. My education of being "good" to animals started very early in life and it was something that always stuck with me.  Education is vital, not just in the scholarly sense, but also in the social sense. I think that there would be less animal abuse/negligence if the concepts of animal being our friends and animals being living creatures, who feel as we do, were instilled from very early in life.