The relational ethics vegan challenge

Introduction to the challenge

There are lots of vegan challenges around food — what to eat, how to shop, how to cook — and plenty of focus on fashion, personal care, sustainability, and environmental protection. Think Veganuary: a record 25.8 million people participated this year. That’s fantastic. But what about a challenge concerning how we use the animals we consider our possessions, pets, or family members?

This exploration isn’t about food or products – it’s about how we relate to animals themselves.

Through vulnerable personal stories, I'm going to guide you on a one-of-a-kind free and supported self-paced relational ethics challenge.

This journey is for you if you are ready to go deeper than your shopping cart. I can’t coconut-sugar coat this; it’s tough to see ourselves and our relationships with animals clearly, but it’s also liberating. The reward for the work of self-reflection is the peace that comes from being in alignment when our actions finally match our beliefs.

Waking up

There are moments in life when something you've always known and also ignored comes sharply into focus and demands attention.

For me, that happened one hot summer morning five years ago.

I was standing in front of Rio Rose, the last pony I owned, taking in her perfect beauty, my curated barn and riding arena, and thinking about the lifetime of horses that shaped me. My black quarter horse with a blaze and one blue eye; the thoroughbreds I rode on the racetracks of south Florida. The babies I “broke.” The lesson horses whose stalls I cleaned and took to shows.

All the way back, I saw that every relationship I'd had was characterized by use and my desires for companionship, comfort, acceptance, fame. I was in a position of relational power and, in many cases over the years, I imagined that gave me power in the world as well.

Standing there surrounded by the realized fantasy of my own creating -- living the dream with my dream horse -- I was trying to reconcile my lifelong participation and current complicity with the idea I now held: that animals are not ours to use in any way.

I saw that the only way I could rest in alignment with my inner knowing was to change myself and surrender the insistence that my relationship with horses was natural, mutual, spiritual, necessary to my very existence. It required a letting go: the actual letting go of Rio and the shedding of my identity as a horsewoman.

This challenge begins here, with the moment of waking up. Relational ethics starts with perception -- with seeing what was always there, with noticing the roles we've played without realizing it, with telling the truth about how we were shaped.

Reflections

When have you felt something you’d always known suddenly come into focus?

What truths about your relationships with animals have been waiting quietly for you to notice?

Rio Rose

Freedom?

Living with horses necessarily means living outside. And I loved that!

Coffee with the sunrise, eking out the last drops of sunset and making quick to finish tasks before dark. The flora and fauna of the natural world create the backdrop, the birdsong the soundtrack of the days. You’re keenly aware of the habitat on which you tread, on the lookout for danger, too – like noxious plants and rattlesnakes when you live in the desert. All this glory, however, really is peripheral when your focus is the horses.

In their absence, the time and space opened for new, I followed the white desert iguanas to their tunnel of caves in the old riding arena, and I tuned in to specific bird sounds. For the first time with awareness and deliberation, I traced the sound of the bird to the bird on the branch. I saw her sing, and I was transfixed.

I bought a pair of really crappy binoculars and flitted around the property, hiding in chaparral and behind mesquite branches, hoping to see more. Then I was given a pair of really good binos and with them a portal into a new world. I saw things differently and I saw things for the first time.

I joined a weekly birding group and began to identify the local birds by sight, behavior and sound. That first spring migration blew my mind with a parade of new characters, songs and stories. I became more interested in the native plants that provided a haven or host and lined the trails I wandered, following the shadow of flight, the rustle of leaves, the whispering under brushes.

The act of observation only available from afar met my requirement to be with animals and not use them. I did not intervene, control or possess. Could that freedom, for the birds and for me, last? How entrained was the new tenant of my veganism, the relational ethics that says animals are not ours to use in any way?

Reflections

What opens up in you when you stop centering yourself in a relationship with another being?

What have you noticed only after something else fell away?

The elephant in the room

Before we get back to the birds, let’s talk about the elephant in the room or – I should say – dog who’s been in the room all along.

This truth hurts so much that, although it makes noise in my head daily and often in repeating patterns, I’ve been avoiding writing about it.

What about dogs then, or cats, if you prefer? Does our relationship with them fit any differently into the paradigm of non-use by humans? Because they live in the house and sleep in our beds? Because they love us so much? Because we believe our mental health depends on them or that we cannot live without them?

Let me suggest that this is the same cognitive dissonance that people experience when they say they love animals but eat them. It’s what Dr. Melanie Joy’s work, “Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows,” is about.

Make a home for all the homeless, empty all the cages and never breed again – that goes for any species of domesticated animal for any reason. This is the moral and ethical imperative. It requires a selflessness of humanity and actions the opposite of what we’ve always done, because in a way no different than slavery, we bred these animals for our use and we’ve kept them coming in great (over)supply. Some are treated well, many are not. And an unfathomable number of other animals suffer unbearably just to feed them. For that discussion and a theory of abolition and animal rights, you’ll want to read philosopher Gary Francione.

Why does the idea of not having a companion animal hurt so much? For me it is dogs, maybe for their emotional complexity; for you it may be somebody else. But sadly for them and lucky for us, we won’t run out of rescues to shelter in our lifetime. There are something like 900 million dogs on the planet. How long would it take for dogs to go extinct if we magically stopped all intentional and unintended breeding today?

Reflections

What emotions arise when you consider the idea of not using animals for comfort, companionship or emotional support?

Where do you feel tension between what you believe and what you practice?

Hope is the thing with feathers

Back to the birds.

I’d always put out water for the yard animals, a necessity in the desert. Now I was throwing out seed and hanging elaborate feeders with bevels to stop the myriad squirrels and rodents I was inadvertently attracting.

The snakes came to dine on those souls, just like the hawks came for the buffet and the roadrunner snatched the baby quails trailing their parents. I created an entire unnatural ecosystem upon which I lorded over.

On top of that, filler seed the birds ignored inevitably sprouted, and invasive millet took off. Worse, house finches began to show up with avian conjunctivitis, a fast-spreading contagion common in neighborhoods with a lot of birdfeeders and thus an unhealthy density of birds. It was horrifying. I shut down the whole thing and returned to my binoculars.

Without the frenzy of the feeders, I embraced simple observation, the kind that asks nothing and changes nothing.

I began to notice an individual – the same little verdin, a bird common to my area – who made regular visits to my patio.

I decided he was a he, though verdin are monomorphic, meaning male and female look pretty much the same. Every day he was in the same tree doing acrobatics as he hung upside down and gleaned insects from the branches. He also frequented a flowering shrub that produced trumpet-like orange bells from which he extracted nectar. He was very chatty, as well, announcing his arrival so clear I could hear it from anywhere in the house.

I read that, like me, verdin love pomegranates.

I cut a pomegranate in half, speared it to his palo verde tree, and waited. Within a couple days, along with a stream of ants, he had found it. When it was done, I replaced it with another and then another. Next I lay in the hammock under his tree. I held half a pomegranate in my hand and pretended to be asleep. I waited a long time, and he landed.

I did it. I befriended a bird, and I was breaking my own rules again.

Reflections

When have you tried to “do the right thing” and found yourself slipping into old patterns?

What does non‑interference mean to you, and where does it feel challenging?

A snowflake, not a blizzard

I often see verdin at the farm animal sanctuary where I volunteer. I could have been of good service at any number of horse rescues in my area, but I chose pigs. Yes, I find them delightful and love when they flop and lie in my lap. But I don’t need them to do or be anything for me. I don’t need anything from them. They can just be the pigs that they are. And it is joyful to be with animals who are saved from suffering and slaughter, and to be with the vegans who saved them. I am responsible only for the animals’ well-being. It doesn’t feel like performance or an act of love; for me, it feels like duty – and I’m good with that. Duty not devotion. Care, not claim. How am I doing?

And then a horse arrived.

The first thing I noticed, with relief, is that I didn't need her to love me. I didn't need her to comfort me. I didn't need her to do anything or be anything for me. Snowy could just be the horse that she is.

When the sanctuary adopted a horse last month, my interaction with this lovely gray was my first encounter with a horse in the five years since I let Rio Rose go. I found myself in that forever-known place, the form of her body felt without looking, the smell intrinsic. What was different this time was me. How am I doing?

Sometimes not eating animals is very easy. Not using animals for our enjoyment is very hard. People will espouse all the gray areas, but it’s easier for me to make things black and white.

Domestic horses – and let’s extend that to all species of companion animals – in our world exist because we put them here. We may not be complicit in buying, using and, frequently, abusing them; but we can be caregivers with agendas only to safely shelter, generously feed and fabricate a sense of freedom.

What about lavishing attention and affection, then?

I ask myself, is it requested, and can I do it without wanting anything in return?

How am I doing?

Reflections

What does it feel like to care for someone without needing anything in return?

Where in your life are you practicing alignment between your values and your actions?

Want to share your reflections from the challenge with me? I'd love that! Click here.