This little story has been bouncing in and out of the headlines in Toronto this week:
Seriously… a $15 000 reward for a dog? I mean, if the owner can afford to and wants to, fine, but I don’t understand it. Was the dog a rare Malaysian truffle hound, of whom there are only six breeding pairs in the world? Was it an unusually-trained service dog? Did the dog rescue stranded hikers and mix them drinks?
So what? The article says he’s a banker. Maybe he makes more than $1 million per year. People pay that much for a handbag.
Why not? I’ve never been a dog owner but I would imagine $15K to get your lost pooch back is as close to buying happiness as you could get.
I like to think I’m a good and responsible pet owner, and we’ve always treated our critters well, if not indulgently sometimes. However, cold and heartless as it sounds, in our budget, the critters don’t rate anything extraordinary. I expect if we had more disposable income, we might be a but more magnanimous, but the bottom line is: they’re animals. As sweet and special and loyal as they may be, they’re replaceable. And I’d like to think if I had $15K in pocket change, I’d be more inclined to give it to a shelter or donate it to a spay/neutering program rather than ransom a critter of mine. (I do see where the banker did give $5K to an animal hospital…)
On the other hand, it’s certainly none of my business how other people choose to spend their money. For all I know, someone may berate me for choosing to buy the particular brand of kitty litter that we use because it costs too much or too little or something. Life’s too short to sweat the small stuff. <shrug>
I don’t have $15,000 to spare, but that’s a function of my financial state, not the banker’s.
My take on this is that when one decides to become guardian of an animal, one is assuming complete responsibility for the welfare and fate of an otherwise helpless creature.
If I had the money, and thought that offering a reward would work, I might well do so, having made a commitment to this particular family member to do my best to protect him or her. The same applies to vet bills – if I have the money, and think that the procedure will help, maybe so.
Sailboat
Some people’s pets are essentially family members. If someone had kidnapped Lenny, I’d have been totally desperate and would use whatever means at my disposal to have gotten him back. I don’t have $15,000 as a reward though.
I don’t see anything wrong with spending $15,000 on a reward. If the guy has the money or can get the money, it’s no different than spending $15,000 on anything else.
I’d think it was ridiculous to spend $15,000 on a wedding or a vacation or a pool or new cabinets or lots of things. So I wouldn’t buy those things. If my cat was kidnapped and I had the $15K, sure why not.
It does seem to not only have enabled him to be reunited with his dog, but to find the dog thief. Chances aren’t bad he’ll get $10k of his $15k back (the $5k that went to the shelter he’d look like a jerk for asking for it back).
they’re not replaceable.
how about the other rich folks who’ll rather spend the 15k on handbags than on ensuring their pet’s safety? we shouldn’t judge in the first place, but money spent on so called frivolous stuff would be more telling as a percentage of your total income rather than a fixed amount. after all, the money we spend on a night out in town could probably feed a family somewhere for a month.
If my Toby went missing, I would pay just about anything to get him back. I love him, and he is absolutely irreplaceable. It would never occur to me to do anything less. I just don’t think I can express what he means to me – he really is a member of our family.
More recent reports have said the dog thief is the one to have promised to donate $5,000 of it to an animal shelter, not the dog owner, and today’s paper said: “His goodwill is under suspicion”. So, the dog owner may get the full $15,000 back after all (but if he’s got real class, he’ll still donate it.)
It doesn’t sound like the arrested guy planned on being a total jackass. He didn’t take the dog, his stepson and the stepson’s girlfriend showed up at his place with the pooch in tow. However, he gets more jackassitude points for being a dick knowing his stepson had dognapped the pooch. If he’d just given the dog back saying: “I’m sorry. The kids will be grounded for two months, I promise.” He wouldn’t be facing charges, but once he decided to go for the reward, he was ransoming a stolen animal. Idiot.
I spent over $1000 on my cat the first month I had him (vet bills mainly). A 15K reward for the safe return of your pet seems perfectly reasonable to me.
No, they are not replaceable. They are not commodities, they are living beings with their own personalities, quirks, and oddball behavior that is unique to each individual animal.
Losing a pet isn’t like losing a pair of mittens or a bicycle. You can’t just go out and get a new one that will fulfill all the same needs and expectations that a quasi-family member represents.
On the replaceable comment, They are replaceable in that you can get another one. Just like you can have another child or marry another spouse.
then everything is replaceable.
I would even say that even an inanimate object is not “just replaceable.” I guess that’s why things are said to have sentimental value. It doesn’t matter if you can go out and buy the identical item as a replacement. It’s not always the same thing. On the inside, not the outside part that everyone sees. I cannot fathom how someone can think buying another dog is just as good as having the original dog. Or “I wouldn’t spend X on ransom! If I had the money I’d spend it on Y!” Um and is that supposed to be better somehow? Why is spending on Y all that different from spending it on ransom? You’re still spending it, right? Or keeping it and doing … nothing? … with it? Is that supposed to be better somehow than spending it? I don’t understand.
I’m always puzzled by threads like this. There’s got to be something that the OPs would be devastated to have stolen from them, and would be willing to pay some inconceivable (to someone else) sum to get it back. Why is a dog any worse or better than something else?
But would you accept a $15k reward for just doing the right thing? If a dog wandered into my yard and I fed it for a week until I saw a flyer I might ask to be reimbursed for what I’d spent, but no more. If someone did something heroic…dove after the dog into the icy river for example, I guess I can see how that merits a reward.
I know the circumstances in the OP arent’ that straightforward. I was just wondering.
I wouldn’t expect or seek a reward, but I would accept one if it were offered. Unless I thought the reward offered was really more than the one offering it could afford.
But we had a dog who was bitten by a snake and died. We got another dog a few months later. We had a cat die in his sleep. We got another a few weeks later. We had a dog run away - she got out of her harness and out of the yard - we never saw her again. We have since gotten another dog. (Lest it sound like we have an animal death house, these events happened over many years and in different places.)
Last month, we had to have our beautiful cat put down because the hind end of her body was paralyzed. The vet told us even if we tried heroic measures, there was virtually no chance of saving her. I cried for 2 days afterwards. But she has been replaced, and our new cat has filled the void she left. And if someone stole either of our dogs or our cat, they better not come to me looking for a ransom. If that makes me cruel and heartless in your eyes, so be it. We take good care of our pets. And we have been known to spoil them. But while they’re a part of the household, they’re not members of the family. And as such, yes, they are replaceable.
Those who feel otherwise and treat their critters otherwise certainly don’t need my permission or approval to do so. If you want to leave your estate to your cat when you die, if you don’t mind taking out a second mortgage to pay for your pet’s surgery, if you want to hire a personal chef to cater to your fuzzy companion, it affects me not one bit. By the same token, if I choose not to have open-heart surgery on my dog and opt instead for putting her to sleep, that doesn’t affect you either.
I’m not trying to be snarky here. I just don’t view pets as little hair-covered people.
FCM is quite aware of that, having lost a beloved pet just recently. She’ll never get Brandy back, and no matter how sweet and funny Taz is, he’ll never be Brandy, and she doesn’t expect him to be.
However, I agree with her in that, while you can’t replace that exact pet, and their lovable, wonderful personalities, you CAN get another pet, and frankly if I had $15K of disposable income, I’d not be willing to part with it for a dog. Or a cat. Or a kid (just kidding on that one. 
) I’ve never bought a pet, or paid outrageous (by my standards) vet bills for one, and I’d not pay such a huge reward to get one back.
(Oh, damn, wicked Simulpost.)