Copying my other post here because we're having the same argument in two places:

It’s the interests of the animals, not some metaphysical idea of natural rights that should determine how we interact with them. Playing with an animal just for fun, keeping it around because it just makes food or wool which can be useful to us, giving them medical care and intervening in their lives when they need it, observing them, studying them, and so on, when it doesn’t do them any unnecessary harm or run against their interests, is all fine and good.

If it is against the interests of a horse to ride it, which is an empirical claim that has to be answered with evidence, then it is wrong to ride it. If it is against the interests of a chicken to harvest its eggs against or an alpaca to shear its wool, or a dog to guide the blind, or a fish to eat a sick person’s dead skin, then it would be wrong, but those things aren’t wrong merely because the animals are being used for something, to them because they can’t rationally agree to them.

And to add: the notion that it's wrong to do anything to any thinking being without express consent, as your fundamental principle for determining what treatment of them is right or wrong, does preclude ethically giving an animal or child medical care, or any kind interaction that it cannot consent to, regardless of what it is (like, again, petting a dog).

The idea of interests being the basis for the treatment of an animal is a totally separate line of reasoning, which is what I support.

And as for the idea of natural rights being lib shit, it literally is. Natural rights go back to John Locke, the ur-liberal.

Edit: While we're at it, check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhRBsJYWR8Q