Chapter One

Brevity will be one of my main objectives for this chapter. Shelves are already filled with books on the history of dogs, cats, horses, and domesticated animals of all sorts eligible for the title of "pet." I doubt that I could add anything significant to those works in just one short chapter. Instead, I simply want to give a quick overview of the history of animals from a biblical perspective, a point of view that is seldom addressed in other books.

Predictably, I take a creationism position, but I do not do so blindly. I have studied both evolution theory and creationism and have drawn my own conclusions based on all the evidence. I doubt most evolutionists and few creationists can make the same claim. Both usually follow the lead of others and dismiss the opposite point of view as myth without having studied it out for themselves. I will not discuss the differences between these two beliefs in detail here as I address them in great detail in Cold Noses, and I do not wish to be redundant.

That said, the Bible tells us that originally all animals were made to companion humankind. God even allowed Adam to name them at his pleasure. I think most of us wonder where he came up with names like aardvark and platypus, but let us not concern ourselves with that here. Animal history begins with its creation. Animal history with humankind began one day later when man was created.

When the fall of humankind occurred, animals had nothing to do with it. They suffered under the curse that was brought upon this world by man's b