Shoot With The Heart
It seems to me that animals of all kinds have interactions with people. Not every animal, just those that cross our paths as humans. Some we commandeer for ourselves and they become workers, or food, or a companion. In a way, they become reliant on us or we of them on occasion.
Humans build, grow or raise animals and we do this in the image we choose many times. But that is a little cynical maybe? Try this on then….and this time let’s maybe be more charitable….we share this Earth with them.
Either way you look at animals, we may just need the ones around us as much as we need them. In many cases, they are our friends. Like humans, they take on traits of their own: personalities, humour, frustration, sadness, comforting, mothering, quieting. If treated with respect, they grow in confidence. If treated with love, trusting.
When they are gone from our lives we cease to be as complete as we once were. When we are surrounded by them, our spirits are lifted and we become better for it.
It really is hard to quantify how deeply animals impact us, or how we impact them, but we can’t live without each other. Animals provide and we take. We need and animals provide: sustenance, worker, companion.
It is important to try and document this interaction. Not in as much as it shows the majesty or either animal or human, but what that interaction means and hopefully how it feels. I hope to elicit emotions, sometimes good and other times not. But in the end there is a story there worth telling.