The Standard P19 City Talk |382 Character(s) |2022-01-04
Making decisions that affect others is never easy. It comes down to whether the decision is being made for the decider's benefit or for the greater good.
Driving speeds are a case in point. Vehicles are being built that can go faster with each new generation of vehicles made, but science has shown that going faster is detrimental to the safety of everyone.
So two apparent choices, limit the speed vehicles are driven, or stop making vehicles that can go faster in a shorter space of time. Maybe it is time for a combination of both.
If a vehicle can only achieve a top speed of 80 kilometers per hour and needs a longer time to achieve that speed, it would cut down on accidents caused by controlling a vehicle travelling too fast for human reaction times.
It is not just humans affected by the super speeds vehicles can achieve. Wildlife cannot avoid a fast moving car, especially with the increase in roads and cars, in part because an animal doesn't realize the danger of moving vehicles, particularly at night when lights blind them and cause them to freeze or make them indecisive.
Making decisions for an animal in your care is always going to be challenging. If a human pulls a muscle and is advised that rest will give it time to heal, a sensible person will follow that advice.
Molly mongrel is following a human's decision at the moment, she really doesn't understand why she can't go out on a long walk or why she is being made to move slowly, even though she knows enough to limp and favor her hind leg, which she apparently injured on a walk a few days ago.
Molly's animal brain knows she is injured, but an animal will hide or ignore an injury, because an injury is a weakness and in the wild the weak don't survive.
There is absolutely no point in explaining to Molly that if she avoids doing anything strenuous, the stressed muscle will heal faster and the bottom line is that this human will not feel quite so stressed at watching her usually active dog limping around trying to hide her pain.
Georgina Noyce is an equestrian judge, and has a menagerie of adopted four-legged waifs and strays.