I would not. The Mrs. and I are already waiting for our fairy elderly pets to ‘cross over the rainbow bridge’ so we can travel more extensively.
Science-ing away grief by removing death from our lives is, IMHO, generally bad for us as individuals and as a society, even if it feels good.
Let the pets die. Let the humans feel grief.
The same could be said for eradicating smallpox.
I wonder if unaging pets will ever be able to experience ennui. Dogs can definitely miss former owners; what happens to one living through multiple generations of them? Will they eventually enter a kind of goldfish state where new memories overwrite the old, or will they eventually grow depressed and listless?
Keeping pets is a bit selfish, but we ideally pay them back with a guarantee of safety and shelter and love. Making a pet immortal breaks that contract. We can’t know what will happen once we’re gone.
The ultimate fate of these pets is either going to be slow starvation or violent death in the wild, or unnecessary euthanasia. Both are sad, and I wouldn’t want to purposefully consign an animal to either.
No guarantees against that in this scenario. Nothing stopping them from eating something that blocks their intestine, or poisoning, or snake bites. There are plenty of other non-aging-related diseases your pet could still contract, and accidents can still happen to them too. There may be many huge vet bill$ extending out into your pets’ indefinite future.
Oh, then I probably wouldn’t do it.
It’s protecting them against something so specific that I feel like they’re unlikely to live all that much longer (say, 25 to 30 years instead of 10-15ish) before something else gets them.
No way.
“Forever” pets would probably be susceptible to gene mutations rendering them more unpredictable and dangerous. You don’t want to wake some night to your loving fireside companion ripping your throat out.
Or any other parrot. My current parrot has a definite chance to outlive me (he’s already outlived one owner as it is).
Sure. And I should probably adjust my initial statement from “is generally bad” to “is not always a net good”.
With that change, I do feel the same way about human medical interventions: just because they feel good in the moment does not automatically mean that we’re better off for having developed and/or applied the science.
That conversation is probably a hijack for this thread, but I’ll re-state my position: if I could keep my pet alive and healthy for my whole life and make some future caregiver deal with and grieve the pet’s death instead of me, I would not because I feel that that choice is selfish. It pushes off the responsibility of end-of-life care onto someone else and puts the pet in a position of potential homelessness/distress possibly multiple times (depending on how long they’re going to live). And, acknowledging that anthropomorphizing animals’ feelings is fraught, it would also give my pet the experience of losing its family and home when I die in exchange for me not having to lose them- not a very loving exchange to make, IMO.
That could be said for everything since fire.
There’s a good chance that my mother’s dog will outlive her, and if it does, it will have a home with me. My nieces all love my dogs and would fight over who gets to take care of them if I were to die before they do.
And if such a technology exists, then not using it means they have to die unnecessarily. I keep pets because I like to have them around, but they don’t exist for my own pleasure, they have a life that they would like to continue living, too.
“Unaging”, at what age?
Eternal kittens would be adorable but unfair to the cats. And if it could be eternal kittens, you know it absolutely would be, because so many people wish their cats could have stayed kittens forever.
The owner’s choice, subject to whatever rules the clinics that provide the service have, and government regulations, of which I assume there will be many. Yes, I agree there will be many people who want eternal kittens.
That’s true for Bulls, too.
@k9bfriender I now can’t help think of you whenever I see this amusing cartoon! I hope you enjoy it too.
CeltDog is essentially Celtling’s dog, so I wouldn’t be burdening the next generation. He survived for at least a year on his own in the back alleys of Baltimore. I have seen him hunt rabbits and rats, so I know he’d be fine even without human assistance. I always enjoy watching him walk into a dog park and within minutes form a pack out of a group of much larger dogs, who then follow his lead until I call him home. He is also a superb companion animal, who has converted at least three people with dog phobias.
If any of these things were not true I wouldn’t consider it, but he is a prime candidate for such a procedure. He’s one of those animals who will just always be a net good in the world. My only concern is his age. If the procedure returned his body to a younger state, I would go for it without hesitation.
I need help on this story problem. Say I get my dog the Eternity Treatment. A few years later, I croak, and my son and his wife, who already have two dogs they’ve ET’d, take her in. Now my son and his wife have 3 eternal dogs. Their son, Leo. grows up and gets his own dog. My son and his wife die, and now Leo has four dogs. His parents-in-law die, and Leo’s wife has no siblings, so they inherit an eternal dog from them: 5 dogs.
What happens to all those dogs? Do future generations in my family not get to choose their own dogs because they all have to care for the eternal dogs? (“Why the hell did my great-great-grandparents want such high-maintenance yappers?”) Do many of the eternal dogs simply get added to the 7 million “temporary” dogs already in shelters? If people adopting dogs from shelters give those dogs Eternity Treatments, wouldn’t we have a dizzying number of dogs? I get that the eternal dogs wouldn’t keep procreating, but the other dogs certainly would.
Please help me understand how this does not turn into the Sorcerer’s Apprentice? I assume there’s a way. I just don’t get it.
This is making me think of mr. Jingles.
Some dogs should live forever.
No, but this isn’t really the thread. 
To the scenario laid out in the OP, no, I couldn’t imagine giving a dog effective immortality (yes, I know, accidents). That would be unimaginably cruel.
No. Why would I want to burden my descendants with a pet-keeping obligation they didn’t sign up for?