Animals are not resources or property with whom we can do what we please, their lives matter very much, and they should be firmly entrenched in our moral community. Accepting the notion of ‘animal guardian’ to replace ‘pet owner’ will go a long way towards making the lives of our companions much better and richer.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Dominion does not mean domination. We hold dominion over animals only because of our powerful and ubiquitous intellect. Not because we are morally superior. Not because we have a "right" to exploit those who cannot defend themselves. Let us use our brain to move toward compassion and away from cruelty, to feel empathy rather than cold indifference, to feel animals' pain in our hearts.

Compassion begets compassion, cruelty begets cruelty. What we give we will ultimately receive. Nonhumans help make us human. They teach us respect, compassion, and unconditional love. When we mistreat animals, we mistreat ourselves. When we destroy animal spirits and souls, we destroy our own spirits and souls.

It's bad biology to rob nonhuman animals of their emotional lives.

Often, the greater our ignorance about something, the greater our resistance to change.

Lacking a shared language, emotions are perhaps our most effective means of cross-species communication. We can share our emotions, we can understand the language of feelings, and that's why we form deep and enduring social bonds with many other beings. Emotions are the glue that binds.