"Tied to the Radiator like a Dog"

Free your speech patterns from animal suffering

Nearly every time I watch a television show — especially a procedural crime drama, which happens to be among my favorite types of shows to watch — I hear some horrific phrase that turns my stomach. Today I heard, “He was tied to a radiator like a dog.” The lieutenant was expressing dismay at the way a father had left his adult son. The father was supposedly trying to prevent his son from purchasing more heroin, and he decided that tying his son to a radiator would help him get clean. I heard the phrase “tied to a radiator like a dog” and lost all interest in the son, the father, and the lieutenant.

Which evil-doer on Earth ties a dog to a radiator? What an utterly atrocious thing to do. There is no justification for tying a dog — or any animal, including humans — to a radiator, a tree, or anything else. All of us yearn to be free. All of us. Dogs, humans, and all other living things.

One step we could take in order to help us become more compassionate people — people who have no need to oppress other creatures in order to feel free — is to remove such horrific phrases as “tied to the radiator like a dog,” “shot in the street like a dog,” kill two birds with one stone,” “more than one way to skin a cat,” and “I have goose bumps” from our speech patterns. To learn more about ways we humans use violent speech towards other animals on a regular basis — and to learn other phrases we can incorporate into our speech patterns in place of these cruelty-laden phrases — check out Colleen Patrick-Goudreau’s podcast “Animalogy.”