Some animal rights people seem very concerned about the way that we treat pets. Francione and Charlton wrote an article arguing for this conclusion. This is, I believe, a mistake — pets serve as a decent model of how we should treat animals.
We would never tolerate factory farming of pets. There are laws against cruelty to pets. If a person treated pets the way that people treat factory-farmed animals, they’d be jailed and seen as a moral monster. The same should be true of pets.
I also think that this gives a really appealing message. You don’t have to think pigs matter anywhere near as much as people do — you just need to think they matter somewhere near as much as dogs do.
Thus, it seems like a tactical mistake to condemn pet ownership. But I also think it’s a moral mistake. As Yetter Chappell notes,
Rationally autonomous beings have an interest in developing and preserving their autonomy, and when this interest is violated their life is (in this respect) worse as a result.
This crucial feature is obviously lacking in non-rational animals. So long as we do not mistreat them (whether by outright cruelty or mere neglect, e.g. failure to provide a sufficiently stimulating environment) domestic animals' chances at a fully flourishing life are not impaired by the mere fact of our control over them. They have no interest in being free of our control, because they have no capacity for rational autonomy that would be served by such "freedom". Life in the wild is often nasty, brutish and short. We can provide much better lives for our companion animals.
Perhaps the simplest way to refute F&C's argument is to note that moral rights must track interests. It makes no sense to posit a right that serves no possible interest. F&C acknowledge that domestic animals have no interest that would be served by a right against dependency or human control / guardianship. (They do not advocate abandoning domestic species to the wild, but rather taking care of those that currently exist whilst preventing any others from coming into existence.) Domestic pets are not better served by non-existence than they are by living happy lives under human guardianship. So it is absurd to posit a right whose only purpose would be to push us towards this worse outcome. That would be the most pointless, counterproductive right ever.
We do better to realize that dependency is not always and everywhere intrinsically bad. Dependents are vulnerable to abuse, and extended dependency may be an obstacle to important kinds of development, at least for beings -- like humans -- with the capacity for rational autonomy. But it is hard to see why dependency per se should be considered a bad thing for a dog. To think this would seem an unfortunate kind of anthropomorphism.