My cat’s about the only thing that has never yelled at me or been snarky about my bad habits. She also came out of a shelter after being abandoned, and even trusts me so much she gets into her crate and rides in the car without any complaints. She goes or I don’t.
I think that’s a bit different, though. There’s a difference between deciding not to go to a Heaven that doesn’t allow dogs and risking death/dementia over an animal.
I would abandon any pet to get back home to my family. No question. No doubt.
I can get more pets. And I love my six furbabies. I guess I just don’t love love them.
I don’t really have a family (technically I do but we don’t spend time together); just my boyfriend. Who I love very much.
I still think I would feel too guilty to abandon my dogs. I’ve had my 14-year-old dog since I was 11 years old and she’s like my little sister. Both my dogs are old and and there’s no way they could provide for themselves in any capacity. Probably I would wait for them both to die of old age (it should only be a few years now) and then try to come home.
My cats I would leave without much thought. One of them hates people anyway, they could probably feed themselves quite well, and my friendly cat would probably find a new human to rub himself on very quickly.
If I had kids I imagine it would be totally different.
Is it just me or does anyone else think that Skald next poll is going to be about your child trapped in a burning car and do you shoot them or let them burn to death?
These polls are getting a little… out there.
One of the lessons from Katrina is that humans are often wrong in a crisis. We assume the worst too early, like the guy who cut through his arm while trapped under a furnace, only to pass out and be awakened by emergency personnel who rescued him but could not save his arm.
Remember in Katrina the official panic about imagined armed mobs roaming post-apocalyptic New Orleans? Officials refused to send in the National Guard for fear of civilian looters; helicopters reported that they had come under fire…and a military that had dared downtown Baghdad’s air defenses refused to fly to the city’s aid. Officials even said --on camera, I watched them – that the sports stadium was out of control and too dangerous, while on other channels you could watch live footage from inside the stadium of nothing much going on.
When we finally did go into the city, there were some shootings – police shooting people they encountered. Some of the officers are in the news this week facing trial. But the whole Thunderdome scenario turned out to be pure imagination.
My point is that people all too often give up or panic and make irretrievable decisions when they think their own precious butts are in danger. They’re often wrong. I am fundamentally inclined to reject any assertion that my only chance is to consign loved ones to doom, because that’s been so often the wrong decision.
It’s like the crazy people who kill their own children because they can’t see any way out of the awful place they imagine the world has become…get caught, get treated/medicated, and then regret killing the children. It turns out that help was possible after all. Killing the loved ones to save yourself (or them) is almost always the wrong choice, even when it’s couched in such apparently logical terms as the OP.
A further point that influences my thinking. It’s not about a pet, but it’s vaguely parallel. As a child, we had to move suddenly once, and the parents directed that everything nonessential should go into storage for a few months. This included our teddy bears/stuffed animals. I mistrusted the situation and wanted to keep my teddy bear in my hot little hands at any price. How much trouble is ONE teddy bear going to be? But to make an object lesson, my parents insisted, and into storage he went. They wound up teaching me an entirely different lesson. The storage wound up being long-term; it was three years before we got our stuff back. But my brother had lied to my parents, defied the order, and kept HIS stuffed animal. The consequences of this defiance were negligible – just head-shaking by my parents. And for years he had his “loved one” and I did not.
My parent felt terrible about it of course, and my Mom made me a new stuffie. But the lesson remains clear – never mind what the official line is. Stay with what counts. Cleave to your loved ones and damn those who would separate you, even “for your own good.”
I have 2 dogs I consider to be mine that I would not abandon. Three others, who for various reasons are with us temporarily, I would leave behind, an well as any cat my wife has or had.
You can always decline to participate in the poll or read the thread, you know. But I’ve no interest in polls about children in cars.
Oh, come on. It was hilarious!
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=289696&highlight=acid
Okay, how about instead of shooting your child in a burning car you have to choose between punching your elderly grandma in the face or being punched in the face by Mike Tyson? 
I’m just poking fun at you Skald. I actually think threads like these are really interesting and make you think about things that normally wouldn’t come up in day to day matters, even if they do make Archibald Asparagus want to scream, “Stop being so silly!”
A promise made is a promise made, even if the recepient of the promise doesn’t know about it. A broken promise is detrimental to both the promisee and the promiser.
Another thread on the subject of making promises to beasts & birds & such, started by me.
What exactly do you mean by “detrimental,” may I ask?
Oh I didn’t mean anything by it. I’ve just always found it amusing when people say they made a promise to their animals. I envision them sitting down with their dog and saying, “I promise to take good care of you.” and the dog replies, “So I can have food now?” because he doesn’t really care.
I didn’t make any promise to my dog and he still loves me unconditionally and is fanatically loyal. The next dog I get will be the same way because that’s just how dogs are.
I mean getting in the habit of making and breaking promises is bad for a person. It’s bad for your “soul” (heart, mind, personality, what have you) and it’s bad for the relationships you have with folks. You know, the people that have to interact with you and realize you are loser that doesn’t keep your promises so they decide you aren’t worth their time. If you promise to take care of any animal* and break that promise, I am going to think less of you and not want you to date my daughters, let you borrow my tools, etc.
*This especially applies to people who get rid of pets for the sake of convenience. If you want convenience, do not get another living creature to share space with; get a fucking stuffed animal if you need something to temporarily cuddle with.
Nope. If the dogs stay I stay. They are my companions. And they’ve seen me through more hard times than any human I’ve ever known, save one.
thank you for finding that, my search-fu was weak.
*Sadistic nutjob! You left out *anybody who’s previously owned a pet but does not currently have one. I grew up with cats, had a roommate with a cat, and currently have a boyfriend with cats, but I haven’t had one of my own since I moved out of my mom’s house.
I’d like to think I’d find a way to get the pet back anyway. But if it truly came down to my death/insanity or leaving the pet behind? How does it help *either *of us if I stay only to be put in a position where I can’t care for the pet, anyway? It’s like insisting that in a choice between a pregnant woman and her fetus, they shouldn’t do anything that could harm the fetus, even if the mother ends up dying.
I’d be interested to know how many of the “I would refuse to abandon either my current or any previous pet” people have thought their choice through. Effectively, you’re saying that if your house was on fire, you wouldn’t leave the burning house until you were sure your pets were also safe. I’ve got $5 that says every single one of you would get out in time to save yourself from burning to death.
Further note: If I couldn’t find someone I knew could care for the pet, I’d be sure it was euthanized.
That’s hardly a fair comparison. The OP’s example is nothing like being in a burning building.
No one knows how he will behave under extreme stress. I’d like to think that I would get all my dogs out or die trying. I have run into traffic to save a dog before.
I’d pay $5 to watch rats fuck, so I’m not sure how much weight to give your wager, if any.
Reminds me of an episode of CSI (or one of those crime shows) where this lady gets killed when her truck is hit by a train. She had plenty of time to get to safety but she didn’t. It’s discovered later in the episode that her dog was trapped under the seat and she was trying to get him free. I just don’t get it. Even if the dog was capable of understanding that you died trying to save him, he’s dead now too!
That’s not exactly true.
In other words, choosing to stay for your pet = choosing to die with your pet. How is that not the same?
Well, for starters, Guns’ scenario didn’t involve death. It involved staying until the pets were safe.
You do understand about fire, right? It kills horribly and very very quickly, whether you have reason to think so or not. Being in in a burning building is nowhere like undergoing “a series of unpleasant adventures” in a land where he might think he “will soon be dead.”
In the OP’s scenario, staying there at least holds out the possibility of survival. You’ve made it this far, haven’t you? He said nothing at all about said survival being at the cost of the constant burning and melting of your flesh. Like, you know, in a burning building.