Plague Dog film response

This film was hard to watch. I'll just start with that first. I am an avid animal lover and even though this was animated, it was hard to watch because it invoked strong feelings and I could identify with the dogs. However, I am sure that was the film makers goal. By using images and personification of the animals, I was manipulated into feeling strong about the content in this movie. Many times it was hard to watch, espiecally in the begining. There was definatly a strong emotional case in this film against animal cruelty in testing facilites.

While I know I was manipulated when watching this film, I do feel like the author/film maker had a viable thought behind it. From this I can conclude that there was approriate emotion (if not abit strong at some points) and a thought that goes along with it. This film really made me look into animal testing and really made me wonder whether or not stuff like this still goes on. What they did to Ralph was cruel because I feel that it was not the best way to collect what they deemed valuable information. I feel that they could have run that experiment differently and avoided the path that they did.

I think it would be a good idea for all animal reasearchs to read Midgley's book because I feel she brings up some valuable points in the chapter on emotions and thought. I like that there are a serious of questions that reasearches should probably ask themselves. It starts with are the experiments really neccessary? (Any reasearcher will say yes). Ok then if you are using animals who deifines how they live an ordinary life? Who makes that criteria? (In this aspect Midgley says that a naturalist/ecologist outside of the influence of the reasearcher defines this. It is only through studying an animal in a natural habitat that we can decide this). The reasearcher should then ask is the experiment the only way to provide information by harming the animal? Is the information really that viable or can it be gotten another way? As Midgley points out, we are so rarely in lifeboats that a reasearcher should answer yes to this last question.