Katherine Rogers novel “First Friend” discusses the history of dogs and mankind. She paints a visual image of dogs roles throughout human history and why they are so important to us. However despite these wonderful creatures usefulness, we have a notorious history of maltreating them and I personally believe that our prejudice towards dogs is somehow corresponding to the lack of communication we have with them. While it is true that man and dog were able to cooperate with each other for survival we were never able to truly communicate with each other. Our most basic way of communication would have to be through language and if someone else's language is not native to us then we will not be able to communicate with one another and make decisions.
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However much of the degrading that dogs faced in the 19th century had to do with the fact that most people thought dogs were inferior to humans. Inferiority is another form of distrust because it shows how people think something is better than another thing and this type of thinking can only be achieved by distrust. An example of this would be when prisoners of war are mistreated by the victors because there is a lack of trust between the winners and the losers. If the winning side did trust their defeated side that much then they would have done something else like treat them nice or respect their culture, however they would usually treat them as inferiors. So this shows how distrusting someone and treating them as your inferior is the same thing and both of these interchangeable things lead to neglect over another living thing. In one story it states how a merchant forgot to pick up his bag of money and his dog was trying to remind him but then the merchant misread the barkings of his friend and he gracefully put the dog out of its misery, once the man found out his mistake he condemned himself for his actions and weeped for his loyal friend (115). This event shows how a man was able to kill his dog despite him being a good companion. This shows how the lack of communication led to the merchant taking his dogs life and the fact he was able to take another
However much of the degrading that dogs faced in the 19th century had to do with the fact that most people thought dogs were inferior to humans. Inferiority is another form of distrust because it shows how people think something is better than another thing and this type of thinking can only be achieved by distrust. An example of this would be when prisoners of war are mistreated by the victors because there is a lack of trust between the winners and the losers. If the winning side did trust their defeated side that much then they would have done something else like treat them nice or respect their culture, however they would usually treat them as inferiors. So this shows how distrusting someone and treating them as your inferior is the same thing and both of these interchangeable things lead to neglect over another living thing. In one story it states how a merchant forgot to pick up his bag of money and his dog was trying to remind him but then the merchant misread the barkings of his friend and he gracefully put the dog out of its misery, once the man found out his mistake he condemned himself for his actions and weeped for his loyal friend (115). This event shows how a man was able to kill his dog despite him being a good companion. This shows how the lack of communication led to the merchant taking his dogs life and the fact he was able to take another