I’m pretty sure that, in her case, it’s a whopping brain tumor.
What organ do you think processes all senses, such as taste and smell?
I’ve had cats and dogs I loved more than I can express. There, I’m letting you know.
Every sane, decent person I have ever known who had pets and then later had children loved their pets absolutely to peices, and then when they had children said “Whoa, now this is on a totally different level. I didn’t know you could love anything this much.” It’s an amazingly common reaction and EVERY parent I have ever met who is not mentally unbalanced (and some that are) says the same thing. Every one. Not once have I ever met an emotionally balanced person (or, to be honest, any person) who had pets, then kids, and said “Meh, I love by cat just as much.” After awhile you have to accept that sort of thing as constituting a pattern of some kind.
This is a statement borne of arrogance and igorant on it’s face. You make assumptions based on facts not in evidence and you further assume that your ideas are right for every single person in every single situation. You seem more reasonable than that most of the time.
Let me tell you about the last 48 hours of my life, my pet, and love, hormonal and otherwise.
I left work a little early on Friday to spend a few of the gift cards I had from Christmas. I get a call from Mrs. Jockey that some 45 minutes ago, our dogwalker “lost” our eldest dog Cosmo. He was lost, roughly, in this area, specifically the Chicago loop. At rush hour. On a Friday.
I left where I was and drove home as fast as I could to join the search. The dogwalker had gathered some dog people to assist in the search. We had people stationed at the dog park where he got loose, people from the dogwalking service left their offices and joined the search. At one point we had as many as 20 people looking. They drove countless miles on the same city streets over and over again as the light drained from the sky. I took my motorcycle out into the January air and rode through parks and down paths and in places that, technically, I shouldn’t have been. As it grew later in the evening, volunteers began to concede the search because of the dark. We however, soldiered on. Walking miles and miles in the growing cold, through a protest of the actions in Gaza that tied up a major intersection and at least 100 cops, (which while I’m on the subject, Hamas, and by proxy Palestine, can suck it). We walked down alleys, under buildings, through parking garages, talking to every person that we saw, together and seperately, covering the same 2-3 square miles no less than 5 times in the course of 12 hours. By the time 12am rolled around, we were seeing him in every shadow, down every alley and in every dark space. We were physically and mentally exhausted and still continued. I slept for a few moments in the car while she searched the dog park. She sat in the car while I seached parking garages. This went on for another hour, until neither of us could think clearly enough not to be a danger to others by driving around. With a deep and abiding sadness, we stopped for a couple hours to rest, it was all we could do. We enlisted the folks at www.lostandpound.com to release lost dog notifications to the officials in the area, we made flyers and prepared to distribute them, gave our number to everyone we could. We laid down at 130am. The phone rang at 2, it was our doorman who saw Cosmo on camera out in front of the building. In winter coats and house shoes we ran outside, he heard my call and came to me, paws run bloody by 12 hours of panic and fear and evasive maneuvers. He was home.
During that time, the bottom was out of my soul. I was angry, depressed and motivated by what might be happening to him alone out in the city, a million variables, a million unknowns, a million things that COULD have gone wrong for him. Was he hurt, hungry, cold, scared? Was he alone, would someone catch him and use him for dogfighting bait? Would he fall into the lake or the river or get hit by a car? Where was he? What was happening to him? Were we just seconds from one another or were we miles apart? It was my job, my duty to protect him from these things and I’ve failed! It hurt so badly to know there was nothing I could do but keep looking. Mrs. Jockey broke down a couple times in such a way I have never seen from her in life. Great wretching sobs, pleading for this to be just a bad dream, hoping against hope for the safe return.
Having searched for lost children in the past, I’ve seen these emotions, felt them by proxy for the parents. It’s the not knowing that hurts most. The only thing that keeps you from going absolutely mad is the slight possibility that the one you love is still out there and just might return to you, hopefully safely.
You can say I don’t love my dog as much as you love your kid, but you can’t KNOW that. I would never assume that my love for my dog is greater, better or deeper than yours for your child and you have zero right to make that assumption about me. I cannot imagine being any more concerned, any more worried or anymore scared than I was for him. If I was I simply could not function and would be of no use to anyone, especially him.
The line between pets and kids for some is clear and for some is blurry. You can call it madness if you choose.
There is only so much society will do for a lost pet, as opposed to a lost child, which is only right. If my dog in this case were my child, there would have been armies of police, firefighters, helicopters, newspeople and volunteers to help look. There would have been broadcasts over radio, television and the internet. Faxes distributed to businesses and alerts issued to wireless devices. For my dog There were 20 volunteers, an internet location service and a phone tree. That is essentially how it should be, I think. Children are and should be more important than pets, but I stand in willful defiance of anyone who says my love cannot possibly be as deep or as true. After analyzing what happened and how it happened, after feeling the anger at the dogwalker, after wanting blood from the person who wronged me, after understanding how angry I was, how sad I felt and how upset I was, after meditating on everything I’ve been through and every emotion I’ve felt, there is nothing I would have done differently. That, in my estimation, is love.
Wrong.
No matter what anthropomorphic fantasies you may entertain, a dog is a DOG, not a person; ditto for cats, horses, guinea pigs and sea monkeys.
If buttonjockey really feels that way, what can you say? That’s his right. I’d probably put him in the crazy pool with curlcoat, but you can’t tell him that HE doesn’t THINK he feels just as strongly as people do about their kids.
But if one my kids goes missing, don’t you dare try to tell me that you know how I feel because your dog ran away once. If you think you can relate, keep that shit to yourself, because I’d probably lay you out.
I can.
If anyone honestly felt the same about their pets as parents do about their children, then they would never own one.
If parting with a 12 year-old cat or dog were the same as losing a 12-year-old child, the concept of “pets” would cease to be.
Well, with all due respect, I have the right to make whatever assumptions I please. I’m making an assumption based ona fairly considerable mound of evidence. I appreciate your love for your dog. I’ve loved a dog, too, and I know how it feels when one is lost (and how it feels when you find them again, and I am glad you found Cosmo, who looks sweet as all get out.)
I cannot know your soul and your feelings. I cannot and am not suggesting there is anything wrong with loving your dog or that it’s not a profound experience - I know it’s a profound experience. My dog Deej was my friend and companion for 17 years and her picture adorns my office wall to this day, six years after she died. If there is a Heaven (against my expectations) and I somehow earn entry into Paradise I fully expect she will be there waiting for me, and if she isn’t then I’ll have stern words with the proprietor. So I think I know how you feel. My adore my cats today. I am no casual pet owner.
What I do know are my own feelings and what everyone who has experienced both parenthood and pet ownership tells me. They all report exactly the same thing; that the love of a child raises their understanding of love to levels they could not previously comprehend. That doesn’t lessen love of pets, or parents or friends or what have you. It’s not a zero sum game.
To use a further example, I only have one child. Some people have two or more, and what they tell me is that when you have a second, you don’t love the first one any less; you just find more love, and your love for your kids can even intensify. I admit I find that impossible to comprehend. I don’t understand how I could love another human as much as I love my Small One. But I concede it is quite probable I would, because everyone who HAS experienced it says it is so. That doesn’t invalidate the love I have for my daughter, or make it less somehow.
So you say you can’t imagine being more upset than you were about a missing dog. But thing is, my dog’s gone missing, and I was terrified and heartbroken and furious, as you’ve described. And if my child went missing, God forbid, the measure of my terror and fury would dwarf what I felt when Deej went missing. I can understand it.
For me, it still comes down to this; I’ve experienced both. Many, many people in this thread have experienced both. You haven’t. No, we can’t occupy each others’ brains, but some of us have known both kinds of love, and you haven’t. You are in a relative position of ignorance as compared to me and others in thie thread.
I have to give a big ditto to Labador Deceiver’s comment. If a pet dying was the same as a child dying I can assure you no sane person would ever want to own a pet.
Oddly, this thread makes this atheist geek think of C.S. Lewis.
In one of his books of Christian apologia–either Miracles or The Problem with Pain–Professor Lewis discusses the issue of whether married couples will have sex in heaven. He compares the question to a child asking whether people eat chocolate while having sex. That they do not, the child then decides that sex must be horribly boring, since as far as he knows, chocolate is the greatest pleasure in the world.
I don’t believe in heaven, of course. But people who think owning a pet is comparable to loving a child strike me as being like that child.
(And yes, I’m aware that people other than George Costanza sometimes eat while having sex. I wrote metaphorically above.)
Pretty much sums it up perfectly. Should be the end of the debate.
Wrong for you, not for everyone. Why is this so difficult? I don’t even disagree with the love for a child being different, it should be, but who are any of us to judge the way another person feels?
Anyone who would do that would deserve it. That is not now and has never been the point.
When my dog passed away a year and a half ago a well meaning coworker sympathized, “It’s like losing a freind.” This was the most understanding sentiment I received, but it somehow downgraded my grief. It’s not LIKE losing a friend it IS losing a friend, someone closer to me than any human friend. Anyone who has never had that kind of a relationship with an animal cannot understand how deep a bond people can form with pets. I would guess that people without children cannot understand what it is like to be a parent. My wife and I are expecting our first child in a few months. While the baby will become my first priority I do not expect he will change the feelings I have for my current dog. I love her for what she is, a dog. That is not to say she is just a dog.
I disagree, based on the thread title.
This is true to a degree, but again assumes the unknown. Do parents who have lost children have more children? We know the answer to this is sometimes yes, sometimes no. Do people who have owned animals own more after their animal dies? Again, sometimes yes, sometimes no. This does not equate the love, it is, as I have maintained, different, however it is not, or should not be, within your purview to judge a person because of their feelings, especially those that have no effect on you.
We agree and disagree. I make no assumptions about the love of a parent except that it is, or should be, strong, true, unwavering and complete.
I am not a parent, so as you say, I must exist in a state of relative ignorance, which I do not dispute completely, however there are some among us for whom the mantle of parent neither adds nor subtracts to their psyche. Of course, some may find this troubling, but it is for them to decide and you can judge them based on what experiences you have or have been related to you, but what ends up happening is that nothing changes and only you decide that your judgement is the right one.
Sorry, never been MY point.
I’m not judging anybody about anything, and my post had nothing to do with whether or not one produces additional children after they’ve lost one.
Then you haven’t met anyone like me ( and I am not all that rare ). I realize it is more common for people to move their pet way down in the order of importance when they have kids, but this isn’t what always happens. And in many cases, there are people who choose to have pets instead of children, so if they ended up with an accident, do you think they would suddenly, magically, switch over their feelings just because this baby now exists? And if for some bizarre reason they were forced to keep and raise this baby, do you think they would admit to not loving it more than their dogs, given what society would do to them?
To me it doesn’t seem to be a matter of stupid (tho there is that too) but more a matter of lack of concern. Such as the comment of “oh is that where he was?” - no indication of concern as to where the kid was or what he might have been doing/getting into/getting snatched/getting killed. I don’t know if this is an average parent or not - it’s quite possible that I wouldn’t notice an average parent because their kid isn’t running in front of my car! But, I do end up seeing far too many of the unconcerned or stupid ones, pretty much daily. Maybe it’s just a matter of too many people having children too young?
How else is one going to prove or disprove the possibility that I can love my cat as much as you love your 2 year old, other than comparisons of care? Regarding the leaving a 2 year old child in the backyard unsupervised, this is the same as leaving a 3 month old puppy out there as they are about the same mental age. There are lots of pet owners that do that, but I wouldn’t as there are too many ways a puppy that young could get into trouble, or it could very easily be stolen. It would make me completely crazy to worry about what was possibly going on while I was gone.
Another example. Taking a dog on an airplane over a certain size means they have to travel with the luggage - a large number of pet owners have little or no problem with this. I can’t do it due to worry and didn’t take any of my dogs on a plane until I became “officially” handicapped, so my best trained dog became “officially” a service dog and can now ride in the cabin with me. Imagine how you would feel if you where required to put your 2 year old in a box and he was flown with the luggage. It’s not like it’s unsafe or anything down there, but the thought of having to do that to your child would make you crazy, no? If this were the law, you’d probably do what I do - drive everywhere possible, and not take the (dogs) child when you couldn’t drive it.
Again, you just don’t seem to ‘get’ it. A dog is NOT a person. A dog, no matter how much affection you feel towards it, is a thing; an IT. A cute, interesting, entertaining animal whose instinctive behaviours can sometimes be interpreted as intelligence, or loyalty, or friendship.
In 14-15 odd years my child will be an adult human being, an American citizen with all the rights that entails. He’ll vote. He will drive a car, dress himself, shave, have a job, maybe have a wife or a girlfriend. He’ll probably be in college, or not. He’ll have friends. He’ll have long conversations, in English and/or Spanish, about life, and art, and philosophy, and music, and literature. He’ll play the guitar, maybe even be in a band. Even though his mom and dad will by that time be terribly old and beyond uncool, he’ll still love 'em. He’ll look forward to another 60-70 years on the planet of discovering, learning, loving, teaching, exploring, experiencing and maybe some day passing on a wee pinch of whatever wisdom he has managed to beg, borrow or steal to his own children.
In that same 14-15 years, your dog will be just another dead pet buried out in the back yard.
If parting with a 12 year-old-child hurts so much, why does anyone even bother to have children? This argument makes no sense. It’s not about “My pain is so much bigger than your pain”, it’s about the love you feel towards the pet/child in the experience of having them in your life.
Well, to be fair, they aren’t saying their dogs love them as much as your kids love you. Hypothetically, the pet owner could love the pet a great deal without the pet returning that level of affection.