I love dogs. One of my best friends in the world was a dog who could somehow sense when I had a bad day at school and would lie by my side, looking up occasionally with sympathetic eyes. She would howl to songs when i was moved to sing. She would sing with me.

A dog fight held on November 12, 2013 in Ly Thai To Flower Garden in Hanoi. Photo by VNN.

I also love Vietnam.

It wasn't this recent dog-fighting controversy that first brought about the thought that these two loves might not be completely compatible. It occurred to me only a few weeks after I arrived here: I was walking down the street, Hang Dao, casually, behind two young guys. These gentle-looking fellows were walking arm in arm, quietly chatting as Vietnamese men are so pleasantly wont to do.

I was watching them, just thinking that men don't walk this way in the US, finding exoticism in the intimacy of male friendship. It was nice, I thought, that they had no hang-ups about walking down the street like that.

Then something strange happened. A dog came roving modestly the opposite way. As they passed, one of the men, just as casually as they were speaking to each other, kicked the dog. Hard.

The dog yelped and kept going. The two men laughed and continued their conversation in the pleasant Hanoi day. They seemed to think nothing of it. But I did.

This, in America, would get you arrested, or at least a thorough verbal thrashing from a "dog-lover".

That was only the first of many, many incidents of animal cruelty I have seen in Vietnam. I didn't do anything, and I would not do anything if I saw the same thing today, even though I am a dog-lover.

After some years here, I find there is something distasteful to me about the sanctimonious way in which western visitors and tourists would like to 'educate' Vietnamese people about the treatment of animals.

This is because most of us come from lands of relative luxury, in which we can afford not to live with animals, not to treat them as tools or things. We come from places where all the animals we know either have names or are served on plates.

We have the luxury to dissociate one from the other, in fact. We don't remember the times when the family cow, who we saw reared up from a calf, was fattened and ready to eat - the reason it was born, after all. Then someone would go out to slaughter that cow, and the family would eat well.

I think we should keep this in mind when criticizing Vietnamese people on their treatment of animals. Maybe we should remember that we have the luxury of dissociating the cruelty that occurs in our large industrialized ranches and slaughter houses, which we never have to look at if we don't want, and not many of us do, from our comfortable lifestyle, diet and daily activity.

We can have animals as pets, giving them cute names, loving their quirky characteristics, taking funny videos of them and posting them on Youtube. Then we can sit down and have a nice chicken dinner. Maybe even feed a bit of your delicious chicken to your dog as a treat.

But it's not so nice to think about the fact that the chicken was raised... well you know already, don't you? We just don't like to think about that. We are animal lovers, right? Much easier to be self-righteous. (Vegetarians, your hands are not clean either, though brevity forbids going into that).

The point is that, fighting animals for fun sucks. Yes. I don't think any sane person would argue with that. In fact, the reaction by the Vietnamese to these dog fights shows the same. But the mindset that makes it possible for people to get pleasure out of participating in it should not be relegated to a nationality. That kind of cruelty exists everywhere.

Most especially, those most extreme animal rights critics from western countries should never forget that our nations are probably the worst when it comes to the torture of animals.

Dog fighting should be stopped. So should drone strikes, trade embargoes, etc. Where is our moral compass really?