Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Cat and Dog Repair

How we phrase what we do says a lot about how we view the world around us.

There is a veterinary office very close to where I live. I guess they wanted a catchy name and came up with Dog & Cat Repair. When I googled them, I found pages of Dog & Cat Repair sites.

My question is: Are cats and dogs inanimate objects that can be repaired with nails, hammer, and a coating of paint?

Even if the veterinary personnel is very capable, wouldn’t a person responsible for his pet stop and think about the title of that clinic? How well can people care for our best friends, if they see them as lifeless objects?

Then, if we still take our best friends to a clinic with such a title, what does this say about us as a culture?

As biofeedback therapies demonstrate, language is capable to alter the behavior of human cells, reorganize learned patterns of behavior, and redirect judgments. What we name anything says a lot about our thinking, because up front, names and titles are often what are most perceptible.

Naming things without thinking, if we break through taboos and deny the riskiest, can present the scariest outcomes. This is evident in political climates and intimidations. “Politically correct” is also socially and humanistically correct. Naming anything with offhand callousness, therefore, has to be considered verbal abuse that may lead to warped thinking.

As such, I know to which clinic I will not take my pets for anything in the world.