A bird with a broken wing is not a three-legged dog.
At dusk last night I saw a strange animal on the side of the road. As the car got close and the headlights illuminated it I saw it was a seagull with one wing sticking out at an odd angle.
I saw it again this morning, near the same spot. Its legs were working well, but overall it looked in rough shape, and its wing was broken.
I thought “Poor thing. It’s not going to last long. A fox or a cat will get it soon.” I thought maybe I should go home and get my shotgun and shoot it.
Then I thought about the three-legged dogs I sometimes see at the beach. They seem as happy as any other dogs. And then I wondered if seagulls can be happy. And I thought that even if seagulls can be happy, it must be hard to be happy if you’re a seagull with a broken wing, trying not to get eaten and trying to get food to eat, while all the while dragging your broken wing along.
And yet, would the bird consider a painful and struggling existence life still preferable to no life at all? Animals in that sort of situation generally still do everything they can to stay alive, though presumably that’s “just” instinct and not the result of examined preferences.
As a cat owner who’s also an animal sympathizer in general, I have to ponder this question (and act or not act on my decision) way more often than I’d like.Report
The major difference between them is that three-legged dog is someone’s pet, so they take care of it. If it was a wild animal like the seagull, it would probably die fairly quickly.
On the other hand, you can’t “heal” a three-legged dog, whereas someone who wanted a big project and had some veterinary skills might be able to take the seagull home, splint its wing, and let it go when it got better. It’s not as though there’s a shortage of seagulls, though.Report