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Learning that animals feel love and pain, and that dogs are completely alive and when they die, that life is gone forever--this is a lesson that many children don't learn.
It doesn't do any good to abuse the education system, try to scientifically quantify an animal's pain, or reject emotional appeals. The fact remains that humans have both emotions AND logic; feeling compassion for an animal's pain is an emotional reaction and that emotion will influence our future logical decisions. Without the feeling of compassion, the words "pain" and "fear" mean nothing but their dictionary definitions.
The moment of awakening in which a person becomes aware of an animal's life and feelings can happen at odd times and under unexpected circumstances. I remember very clearly when I learned compassion: I was harassing an ant with a stick, not hurting it but sort of herding it in circles, when I was about 5 years old. A friend of my mother's saw me and said, "Don't scare the little antie," and all of a sudden I felt a rush of remorse for the tiny creature.
Of course, I've since learned that I really don't need to stay up late at night worrying about ants. But still, I sometimes wonder when I would have learned that lesson, if that event had never happened. It's entirely possible that I would have learned it at reading age by an article such as this. I certainly know many people of reading age who know that animals are alive in an intellection sense, but have never felt the visceral compassion that drives my decision to do such things as rescue a near-dead dove from the pet store and spend my entire savings account bringing her back from death's door.
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"It better be funny" 
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