Chinese woman pays to rescue 100 dogs from meat festival: report

[bhikkhu]

49. Yet science supports it

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/02/21/280640267/how-dogs-read-our-moods-emotion-detector-found-in-fidos-brain

and

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201502/can-dogs-recognize-emotions-just-looking-human-face

Much more if you were to study to subject.

There has been a great deal of study on the psychology of dogs. A counter argument might be that there hasn't been much study of the psychology of other animals, but studies of wolves and cats does suggest what we would find. Cats are found to have little neural response or awareness of the moods of their owners. A big difference found between domesticated dogs and their wolf relatives is the ability to form a representational model of the mind of a human - wolves, even those raised by humans, largely lack the capacity. The observed difference is that they "don't care" what we want, they don't pay attention to our faces as much as they lack the neural component to derive information from the human face.

At one time the ability to model the mind of another was considered a uniquely and characteristically human capacity, but it has been demonstrated to be present (though more limited, of course) in dogs. Which is why I would say that killing a dog for food is worse, the difference between killing a stranger and killing someone that wants to be your friend. Both are bad, but one is worse.