Though months of therapy have succeeded in curing my dog phobia, I still hate the smelly bastards and would only take one in if for whatever odd reason I happened to own a tiger that needed to be fed. I assume that would bother you, and, anyway, I 'm still afraid of tigers.
Thank you. I’ve been trying to think of a concise way to express that… The best hypothetical I could come up with was buying a refrigerator. If Maytag finds out I’m not calling a certified repairman, or that I’ve damaged it by moving it excessively, they can cancel my guarantee or refuse to service it. I can’t imagine they’ve got the right to seize it.
While I understand the examples **Swallowed My Cellphone ** and not_alice bring up, I don’t think they quite parallel the pet adoption situation. In the case of internet service, I’m continually paying for the connection. If I do something against the TOS, the company stops providing the connection but they do not rip wires out of my wall or seize my modem. In the case of a car or house, the dealership or mortgage provider can repossess if I stop making payments. This threat of repossession ends when the payments do. In the case of pet adoption, I hand over money for the animal and risk having to give the animal back without a refund if I do something the provider doesn’t like. Can this really be enforceable?
(PS I really do like animals more than it appears in this thread. I’ve grown up with one cat from the shelter and several strays and can’t imagine having legal strings attached to them is all.)
Did I mention we have a seemingly endless supply of pit bulls no longer of use to their gang member owners who were dumped on the streets? How much can your tiger eat?
Oh but they do.
In fact, last summer we were at the ASPCA in a neighboring town, we saw a dog we liked, filled out all the paperwork, handed over all the money, signed the form that says we gotta bring him back if we can’t keep him. They say thanks, we jsut gotta give him his final shots or something. OK, we are going to the pet store, we will be back. As we were pulling back into the ASPCA an hour later, my phone rings. Seems they double checked on the chip in the dog, he did have one despite what they said earlier, and had been returned to his family in the intervening hour or so.
OK, good for the dog, good for the family, bad for us. We could have made a stink over the particulars of the agreement, but we didn’t.
Point being, there most certainly was an agreement that defined the terms of the dog becoming ours and not theirs.
They could if you had agreed to it in advance and there (and there was no other overriding law which there probably is). And the modem is likely no good anymore until you or someone else come to terms with them on new service, if the modem came from them.
IOW when the terms of the contract are fulfilled, the restrictions are released.
No different than the case I am talking about.
You get your money back. They are not in it for the money. We got our money back. Fortunately, the pet store was willing to void a decent size sale too.
Then choose your shelters carefully in the future or stick to strays.
Not all of them are like that, as I said upstream, where I live, ours is not. But I can see it might be at some point in the future, we are new. Mostly a supply and demand thing in my experience though. If shelters or rescue groups can be picky because demand outstrips supply, they will be. But drive out to a rural area, you might find things change…
I can agree with a great deal of what you say, and would be willing to withdraw an argument in favor of preferring house with yard to apartment dwelling. I did think the EG debacle was a bit over the top, but I still think that the very original OP way overstepped the bounds. Perhaps the girl was turned down originally for something under #4, that didn’t pertain to the housing situation, and the shelter just used that as a ready excuse. Either way, it is the shelter’s right to turn away a potential adoptee and people shouldn’t lie to get around their rules. And then she sold it to someone that she decided was ok, without knowing the background of the dog herself.
Not necessarily, it all depends on the human and there are just as many bad ones as good ones. One of the reasons you see less dog abuse/neglect in apartments is because they can’t have them there at all in lots of cases. we’re dealing with a much smaller population, and because of the special requirements of having dogs in an apt, people may be more likely to think it through before they drop a couple hundred on a pet deposit. OTOH, a landlord can change their mind pretty much any time they want, and with sufficient notice, could ban dogs in their buildings.
But all in all, I really don’t disagree with your statement. Decent humans can have dogs in either apartments or condos or houses with yards. Unpleasant people can torture a dog anywhere too.
I guess I advocate for yards because that’s what my 3 boys have, and they love their yard! They go between the house and the yard through a doggie door and are outside as often as they can be, in decent weather. They are complete weenies when it rains though, we pretty much have to stand right by the door and tell them to go all the way through, or they stop with their butt still in the house. 
If you told them that you were going to garage it and change the oil every 3k miles, and that was the only reason they agreed to sell you the car, then you are obligated to forfil your end of the bargain.
Yep. If your grandmother leaves you her favorite tea set under the condition you’ll treasure it and leave it to your children, its unethical to sell it on eBay the day after the funeral.
Don’t like the terms the current owner of the dog is willing to give you/sell you the dog under…find a different owner/dog. Don’t like the terms under which you are getting the tea set, let Grandma know her treasured tea set might be better off with one of your cousins.
I think a lot of rescue folks are nuts (homestudy? stay at home doggy parent?) but there are a lot of dogs in need of homes and a lot of places that aren’t picky.
Huh? It’s easily observable. But scientists already believe it – look in the literature.
ok I have a very simple rebuttal to any anti-trickery argument thus far proposed; i saved this wonderful dog from a lethal injection that was seven days away!!
http://imgur.com/NSKv7.jpg
http://imgur.com/wRTty.jpg
Clearly, the concept of a white lie is lost on some of the participants of this thread!
white lie to benefit someone I know, understandable
white lie to benefit me, understandable
white lie to benefit a total stranger, baffles me.
white lie written in contract form, baffles me.
I miss my dead dog too, but worth a white lie to not have the dog myself and given to a complete stranger? fuck hell no.
Have that all written out on a contract that I’m the sole owner and give it away? fuck hell no.
There is no possible reason other than wanting to get in said stranger’s pants that I would even remotely consider such a white lie. I would need to get something in return for such a white lie and having a dog living or not be euthanized is not enough reason for me. Fuck dogs die plenty everywhere, why this one dog? why this stranger? emotions take you over that easy?
When I was little, sometimes my parents tried to put me to bed a little before I was tired enough to sleep. They might read (or sing) to me for a little while, but eventually, one those nights I wasn’t sleepy, I was left up alone laying in bed for a few minutes.
I can’t count the number of times I lay awake with the thought that “i really really hope tonight i dont have any bad dreams of a dog getting cut or hurt, there is nothing worse i can think of during a nightmare”.
dunno where the image first came from, if when i was super-young i had 1 bad dream of a hurt dog that traumatized me or something.
anyways. when i came across a craigslist posting to help someone rescue a dog, I didn’t have to think very hard about it. Sure lots of dogs die needlessly every day, but on this day, I had the opportunity to save one dog.
I am happy with my decision.
I may have not been the greatest parent to my Rescue Collie, but she was born with a jaw that shifted itself to a point that her teeth on that side were usually exposed to the air so she lost them to exposure to the air. After a dozen years of loving her and her loving us (especially because she is well into her golden years and, were she aware of the concept, would prefer to spend her last days with her family) I’m not about to explain to Collie Rescue why I never bought her doggy braces so that they took her away from us.
OTOH, regarding the question in the thread’s title: It’s a dog.
I would LOVE to have a yard, fenced or not, for my dogs. I think it’s great for dogs (and kids) to have a contained outdoor space to be active in. If I had one it would be great for days with bad weather, and I would take them out there all the time to throw balls and chase each other around.
But…my dogs are still happy and well-cared-for, without one. I doubt I will ever own a home, and might not even rent a house with a yard. My dogs and future kids will still be happy and well-cared-for. I will make time for them to get outside to play, other places.
I guess my philosophy is ‘yards don’t make happy dogs, people make happy dogs’. Yards can have a big impact on a dog’s life, of course.
It’s not easily observable without anthropomorphizing, but yes, I appreciate the cites folks have supplied.
People tend to anthropomorphize their pets to a ridiculous level… I don’t think dogs feel ‘sad’, ‘miss me’, or ‘get embarrassed’. All those are assumptions that assume dogs are capable of the same emotional complexity as people (totally untrue).
But they obviously experience and express uncomplicated emotions such as fear, anger, dominance, submission, excitement, and ‘joy’. They are also capable of enough foresight to react emotionally before certain events (for example, when you come home, you dog starts cringing, then you see that he has gotten into the trash again and tell him off. He is fearful when you come in the door because he knows you are going to yell when he gets in the trash - however he is not ‘guilty’ nor does he understand he has done ‘wrong’). I can see this clearly every day with my dogs.
Even if they can’t feel guilt, isn’t fear an emotional response?
I think you overlooked the word uncomplicated in the post you quoted. I daresay that rhubarbarin means that fear is a more primal and less intricate response than guilt.
Oops…gigi posted about dogs being capable of any emotional response at all so I just assumed it was about emotional responses in general, not complicated.
It may not be complicated but if we can assume that dogs are capable of emotions, I think that makes them different from a non-living piece of property then.