True, true. Like I love Fresca.*
*Thank you, Troy McClure
Because most of them make it past 12, indeed outlive their parents, and that’s what you’re hoping for.
An American child has a life expentancy of over 70 years. A dog, maybe 15? Maybe.
The point…which was an excellent one…was that no one would ever be willing to go through the pain of owning a pet you will eventually lose if it would be comparable to dealing with the loss of a child. You aren’t supposed to outlive your child. Odds are you will not. The natural order of things is that the dog dies in your lifetime; the kids grow up, pick your nursing home and bury you.
This post is heavily cut because otherwise it would be huge.
I dismiss any assertion that temporary pain that can be killed with drugs can be similar to long term pain that can only be made somewhat lesser with drugs. Those are things that can be established by facts. The similarity of feelings of any kinds cannot be established by facts, only by example and discussion. Something you seem to be missing.
No, I have never had a migraine - I don’t know why you think I would have. I have had sinus headaches and just general run of the mill headaches and I understand from those who have had migraines that they are much worse. OTOH, off the top of my head I have only know two people who get migraines, so maybe they were not average. I have no idea.
Because I can tell you haven’t experienced what I do because you dismiss your feelings for Buddy and Cassie as “as much as I can love an animal”.
Well, it certainly isn’t my hormones.
Sure. However, you are seeing a pattern in only one sort of person - those who have pets as just pets, then go on to have kids. And probably those who would never dare to buck society’s expectations by admitting they have anything less than “Whoa, now this is on a totally different level. I didn’t know you could love anything this much.” Just because something is outside of your personal experience doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
buttonjockey - exactly. I went thru the same roller coaster when my cat got outside (she is indoor only, has no experience with the outside world) and was gone for a little less than 24 hours. How parents can trivialize the panic, fear and deep gut wrenching pain I felt simply because it was “only a cat” is beyond me.
The fact you think it is anthropomorphic shows you do not know what you are talking about WRT how some folks feel about their pets.
Because you have more right to your feelings than Buttonjocky or I do? You are going to physcially attack use and/or dismiss us as crazy simply because we have a feeling you don’t experience and don’t understand?
When Diver died at just short of 13, after we had spent more than $50,000 on his lymphoma, I went thru the same thing as every other parent has described when they lost a child. This despite knowing that, as a dog, he wasn’t going to live all that long, and since he had cancer we also knew that his time was even shorter. I would never want to go thru that again, but the reality is that what we get from them while they are here is worth the agony at the end.
Huh? You love your kid based on what he is going to become? Or is it that you are somehow insulted at the idea that a “mere animal” creates the same feelings in some people that you have for your kid?
Oh, and FTR, I have no pets buried in my backyard. I wouldn’t do that to them.
And that, friends and enemies, is all I will most likely have time for today. Bottom line - unless you have experienced it, you have no idea how it can feel. So, the only way it can be compared is by the words and actions of those who have experienced it, and many people have come to the conclusion that they do love their pets as much as parents love their kids. Why this is (to get back to the subject) offensive to parents, I have no idea and probably never will.
It also goes to show that you have no idea what the word “anthropomorphic” means.
Quoting Curlcoat,
“Bottom line - unless you have experienced it, you have no idea how it can feel”.
Correct. You don’t have children, right?
This.
Also…I have buried a pet I loved. I have also buried friends, aunts, a mother, and a son. The grief over the cat is by far the least.
Please tell me exactly what you went through that was the same as a parent who has lost a child. I don’t think (although I could be wrong) that any previous poster has experienced both but I have. If you added up all the sadness and grief I have experienced over the deaths of all my pets combined, it wouldn’t come close to the death of a child.
I don’t generally get offended when someone compares a pet to a child- after all, everyone I’ve heard do it has no basis for comparison.The one person who did offend me - well, she took off from work for three days after her cat died, and when she returned explained that “it was like having a child die”. Not if you were back at work in three days- or even three weeks.
What is outside of my personal experience that we’re discussing? I’m a cat and dog lover.
You’re the one who lacks the requisite experience.
Is this post a joke?
Yes, the duration and cure for the pain can be differentiated by facts. Just like I can show you with facts that human children aren’t dogs. That’s not the point. It’s how the pain feels to me. You’ve never experienced my pain. But I’m pretty sure based on your description that it’s exactly the same as your pain.
Would you not consider that to be an accurate description of your love for your dogs and cats? If you say no, the only alternative is some form of “I love my pets less than I can love an animal.”
In any case, your hypocrisy continues to astound me. You can somehow tell I haven’t experienced your level of pet-love because of the words I use, but I can tell you haven’t experienced child-love because YOU DON’T HAVE CHILDREN. Yet you have no problem assuming you know exactly how I feel about my kids and equating your experience to mine.
By Steronz, “In any case, your hypocrisy continues to astound me. You can somehow tell I haven’t experienced your level of pet-love because of the words I use, but I can tell you haven’t experienced child-love because YOU DON’T HAVE CHILDREN. Yet you have no problem assuming you know exactly how I feel about my kids and equating your experience to mine.”
Seriously! Why won’t you address this hypocrisy, Curlcoat?
You will not mess with text or names inside a Quote tag.
You will not mangle a username in Great Debates as a way to engage in name-calling–a forbidden act in itself.
[ /Moderating ]
This goes to show that you still don’t know what I am talking about, since yes, I do know what the word means. Unless you think I am using definition #1 there? Kinda doubt it. Definition #2, “ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman things” hasn’t been done here. We are talking about human feelings towards their pets, not pretending that Fluffy can talk.
Nope. You haven’t spent $50,000+ to give your dog another six months either have you? Waaaaay back in the beginning, I said neither side is going to know how it feels so trading insults about the feelings isn’t going to do anything.
No, I haven’t and no I wouldn’t.
I’m just saying you’re being hypocritical because you are the one that keeps saying that one can’t understand what someone is going through unless one has actually experienced it, yet you keep acting like you can actually understand the other side.
OK, I am going to do this one. more. time. I am not the sort of person that finds reading and repeating the same damn thing over and over again at all interesting.
Since none of us can feel what another person is feeling, all we can go on are the external actions, words, etc. The fact that you were not devastated by the death of any of your pets simply means you did not feel for them what I feel for mine. I was devastated by Diver’s death - I was physically ill for days, I didn’t sleep a full night for almost a year, I cried so long and so hard that I thought I’d never be able to stop, the pain would hit me so suddenly and so hard that I would literally be unable to walk, etc etc. He died three years ago, but it is only lately that I have been able to say his name and I still cannot think clearly enough on the subject to decide what to do with his ashes. Even now, because you cannot believe in something you yourself have not experienced, I get to relive this for your benefit and cry about it.
And remember, there was no added shock from unexpected loss. If nothing else, he was a dog, we knew he would die before us from day one. And he had lymphoma so we knew his time was short.
As for returning to work, I was out a week, unpaid but I was at a point when we could afford for me to not work. However, had I not returned after the week, I would have lost my job. Employers do not offer bereavement leave for pets as they do for children, so comparison of when a pet owner comes back to work is rather unfair. So, it is rather likely that you were completely insensitive towards your co-workers loss, simply because you don’t understand what some pet owners feel.
You don’t sound like one.
Sternoz, I won’t address your most recent post. Not because you call me names but because I’ve addressed what you said too many times already.
Because there isn’t any. Or, to put it a totally other way, if I am a hypocrite for making comparisons to parent/child love even tho I’ve never experienced it, why are you not a hypocrite for making comparisons regarding something you haven’t felt? You say you wouldn’t spend that $50,000+ on a pet, so doesn’t that make it obvious to you that you have never experienced my feelings for my pets?
Go back and read the posts. This is something that has been addressed many many times.
I definitely don’t want to make light of your feelings here, and it’s clear that this experience is probably driving a lot of your posts in this thread. But . . .
If (knocks on wood furiously) someone I knew were bereaved at the loss of a child, and then another person explained in detail that they really could could understand because they had really had undergone such a grieving process over a dog, as detailed above . . . most people I know wouldn’t feel comforted, they’d feel seriously weirded out. If you were incapacitated to this extent over the foreseeable loss of a pet, then [I gingerly suggest] that it really isn’t the pets per se that are the issue with you . . . anyway, I’ve said enough. Ciao.