In the news today....

[agilebrit]

Only in Utah....

Biology teacher dissects a live dog in class.

For those who don't want to follow the link, the gist of the story is a high school teacher (grade not specified in the news story, so I don't know if these kids were freshmen or seniors or in between) got a dog from the local pound's death row, knocked it out, and opened it up for the class. He removed the digestive system and then euthanized the dog. Parents were notified in advance of what was going to happen.

And of course, the local animal rights activists are having a cow. (Heh.) "That dog was someone's pet!" snarls Gene Baerschmidt, of the local Humane Society. Yeah, Gene? Then what was it doing on Death Row?

The knee-jerk reaction to this, obviously, is "EWWWW." But, you know what? After actually thinking about it, I'm coming down on the side of the teacher on this one. The parents were notified, the dog was scheduled to die anyway, and it was unconscious during the procedure. We saw a film of basically the inner workings of a live dog in bio class--and I'm betting that dog suffered the same fate as the dog in this classroom did. And I got to see the pithing of a live frog in that class too.

"But," you say, "that was an icky frog, and this was a cwoot widdle puppy!" Yeah, whatever. At least the cwoot widdle puppy was sedated. The frog got no such consideration. Either way, I nearly passed out. I was okay with dissecting dead things; that was cool. Big needles going into the brains of live things was something else altogether. Needles still squick me, in fact, although not as much as they used to...and did before I ever took that class.

Anyway. I guess I'm coldhearted, because I'm just not reacting badly to this story at all and actually have no problem with the teacher doing this as long as everyone was notified and given the chance to opt out.

In other news, I read "The Velveteen Rabbit" out loud to Da Boy for the first time today and got choked up. Go, me.

Comments

GAH!

[honorh.livejournal.com]

Sorry. As a dyed-in-the-wool dog lover, I wouldn't have let my child see that. Maybe there's not much qualitative difference in the dog's ultimate fate, but to me, dogs are just too lovely of creatures to be experiments or demonstrations. Fact is, some dogs are too good for some humans.

[zilly14.livejournal.com]

My first reaction is "eww" and if my child was in that class, I'd say "no way my kid is watching this." However the teacher did warn the parents before hand, and it's not like it was the neighbor's dog.

[perseph.livejournal.com]

Some dogs do need to be put down as a result of pet owner's irresponsibility in not spaying and neutering their animals. This is unavoidable at the present time, and it is far kinder to humanely put them down than anything else we could do with them. Cutting up a living animal merely to satisfy curiosity is just plain sick though.

Most of those students won't remember much about the digestive system a few years from now. The other lessons – the ones about it being okay to use other living beings as toys – will linger much longer.

Welcome to a new class of potential Jeffrey Dahmers.

(and I don't approve of doing such things to frogs either)

[whirligigged.livejournal.com]

My logical side says "fine, the dog was unconscious and then euthanized," and my emotional side says, "ewwie!"

Poor, cute widdle puppy. I've always wanted a puppy. A puppy that doesn't eat, go to the bathroom, or bite. Yes, basically a stuffed animal that can walk.

Heh, I still get emotional when I read the Velveteen Rabbit, too. It's the one kid's book I haven't thrown away yet.

[crayonbreakygal.livejournal.com]

I can understand some of the research they do for cancer and all and they use dogs. But in a high school class? That's going too far. I hope that one of these kids doesn't decide to perform his or her own little experiment at home with a dog or cat or whatever. Eeew.

If my kid was in that class, I'd have pulled him.

[alliterator.livejournal.com]

I think my objection would be that the dog was alive. When we dissected frogs, the frogs were dead. If the teacher had, say, taken the dog after he was already euthanized, I would probably have less of a problem, but he opened him up when he was still alive, so to me it's "EWWWW!" and "Gross!" Actually, just look at my icon.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

I'd have been all "EW!" if that had been my high school class as well. So, maybe something like this would have been more suitable(?--if that's the word I'm looking for) in a college class. I keep coming back to, the animals that you dissect after they're already dead, you can't see the heart beating or the lungs breathing or the digestive system digesting, and it's very different from cutting into something that's been injected with dye and soaked in formaldehyde.

The comparative anatomy class in my high school got to dissect cats. I was jealous, because the high school I'd transferred from didn't have a class like that.

One part of me is Anya, going, "Oh, puppy!" and the other part is "Whoa, that would be interesting." And the ruthlessly practical part of me says "The dog was going to die anyway, and at least someone learned something from it." And the part of me that wasted four years in college just going through the motions after I found out I passed out at the sight of blood wishes that one of my teachers had done something like that so I would have found out sooner, and thus figured out a different career path before I ever walked down that road.

I wonder if the reaction would be the same if it had been a rat.

[alliterator.livejournal.com]

My sister once looked at owl droppings, which had mice bones in them, in her science class. I was jealous.