Animal Welfare Culture: A Social Constructionist Perspective

Just recently I have embarked down a new path in my journey called life.  I have fully immersed myself into a new culture, the Animal Welfare Culture.  Even though I have been involved with animal care for the past seven years it was not until a few months ago that this involvement became a way of life for me.  I have had some face to face interactions but the majority of my communications within this culture have been via the internet.  Being a very visual learner, communicating and learning the culture through pictures and written correspondence has been quite powerful. This hasn’t been a complete paradigm shift as it builds on parts from my existing culture.  That said it is interesting that when you say the word culture people automatically think of nationality type cultures.  But entering the Animal Welfare culture is just like entering any nationality based new culture, with a few exceptions.  There have been new values, beliefs and attitudes to embrace, new ways of viewing behavior both within the culture and outside of it, and a new language to learn.  One of the exceptions is in language, particularly concerning accent.  There is a new language but it does not require the knowledge of inflection and specialty pronunciations.  For example the other day I sent an email to someone not part of the Animal Welfare Culture, in the email I referred to a dog that had crossed as a “furkid.”  The response that I received was, “it took me a moment to realize that when you wrote “furkid” you were referring to a pet.  The word “pet” is politically incorrect in my new culture, the politically correct term would be, “companion animal.”  The word “furkid” is a slang form of the term “Companion animal.”  Another word frequently used in the Animal Welfare Culture, which I used a few sentences previous, is that of “crossed” when referring to an animal that has died.  That relates to the belief that when an animal dies its spirit goes to a place called Rainbow Bridge, hence the word “crossed” as in crossed the bridge.  Personally these concepts of Social Constructionism contribute to my personal happiness as they fall in alignment with my personal values.  Selecting to follow my career path into the Animal Welfare Culture will bring me great success, whatever that may look like.

The Fur-Kid