Elaborate, like to know why. I’m open to thoughts on it, and not one to take writs personally; go ahead on.
I think Trunk is actually a closeted goat-fucker. He is probably like one of those guys that is always putting down homosexuals because he is overcompensating for his homosexual foray in 1979. He’s a Beastialistist and really “loves” his Dogs … or whatever it is you call a guy who’s into Doggy Style.
Your animals aren’t your wife!
I’m a Buddhist, but I’m also a funny Motherfucker.
Puppy lover?
Daniel
Uh, yeah we do have a word for it. The word is “pets”. Most people love their pets. Those who don’t are the irrelevent minority. Some people just don’t get that, though. They think that they super-duper love their pets in a way that most people don’t understand. They’re delusional; most people do understand. But failing to realize this, they feel a need to describe the “I love my pets” concept to the level of “like you love your kids”, which is offensive in the extreme.
There are expressions that speak to this distinction. For example: “You look like somebody just kicked your dog.” There is a reason that such an expression, except substituting children for dogs, does not exist.
You don’t get special consideration from the world at large when your pet dies. No family leave from work, no bereavement fares from the airlines, no nothing. That doesn’t mean that nobody else loves their pet as much as (generic you) you super-duper love your pet.
It’s offensive in the extreme to compare (generic you) your relationship to your pets with somebody else’s relationship with their children. If you must make that type of comparison, compare your relationship with your pets to your relationship with your children. It should be telling that nobody with children would ever do this.
Again, yes there is a simple way to convey that. Just refer to them as pets. Most people understand quite readily that normally, people love their pets.
So please, for love of god, stop making any type of comparisons between pets and children. They are offensive.
“Her pet just died. It’s like if your kid died.”
“I wouldn’t tie my dog up outside any more than you’d tie your kids up outside.”
“I love my pets as much as you love your kids.”
They’re all just wrong on a visceral level.
It’s late, let me see if I can get my thoughts together in a coherent post.
I think it was the word “angst” that got me the most.
One of the last times we had a thread on this subject, I mentioned that someone close to me “considers her cats to be her kids.” My close friend was immediately attacked for being “crazy.” She is not. She considers her cats to be her charges, her responsibility, and her companions. They are clearly not human offspring from her loins, and they will never have the intelligence or potential as humans. They are cats, and of course she knows this. Perfectly sane, naturally.
Keep in mind that she has never said, in all seriousness, “I consider these cats to be sprung from my womb, and they are genetically equivelant to humans.” Never once. She does, however, feed them while saying stuff like “Hey kids, time for mixed grill supper”, or “My poor daughters, starved to death!” It’s all in in a sort of tongue-in-cheek way, her own lovable sense of humor.
So she jokingly calls them her daughters.
And in a way, they sort of are. They all have a kind of nurturer/mother-dependant thing going on. Not human-to-human, of course, but in that particular household, close enough. There is a dependancy not unsimilar to a human-only household.
This is in the absence of human children in the house. Said friend recently aquired a couple of flesh babies, both four-year-old human males. One is a grandson (through an ex-husband’s daughter), the other is a nephew (through a niece’s adopted son). She loves them both dearly, and in the event of a fire or other emergency, her rescue efforts would obviously go to the humans.
In the absence of humans, though, she will want to save her cats. They will be helpless, and stupid enough to hide under furniture instead of getting out. That’s not love for humans, but it’s still love. And a love worth respecting.
OK, I’m getting off-topic here. It’s late, and I should go to bed. So what’s my point?
You have angst towards people that treat their pets like family. To many people, pets are family, and while not as valuable as humans, are still valuable. Vital, even. Even if they are acknowledged and loved for the non-humans that they are.
Angst? I think not.
So ends my sleep-deprived rambling for the night. Sorry for the incoherance. Kiss your pet goodnight for me, and tell him I’m sorry for using the vaccuum cleaner. He hates that.
Jesus Christ breeders are so sensitive.
It is ridiculous, and you should be embarrassed by this. I know mentally ill people who cannot afford their medication, yet you drop $400/year on a depressed dog. I really do not understand how some people can live with themselves. But wait, I guess you have your own pills for that.
Oh stuff it up your self-righteous ass.
:rolleyes:
On behalf of every poster who has already answered with some variant of “don’t you spend your money on some things that are, strictly speaking, unnecessary,” allow me to say: you’re an idiot.
I’ll ask you the same type of question i asked the OP:
Do you ever spend money on things that make you happy, but are not especially useful in a larger social sense? Do you own a TV? Do you own a computer? Ever go to the movies? Ever taken a vacation? Buy nice clothes?
And if your answer to any of these questions is “yes,” perhaps you can answer another: do you deny yourself any luxuries in order to pay for the medication of those mentally ill people that you know?
If not, how can you live with yourself?
On preview, i see Ogre sort of beat me to it, but i’m askin’ anyway.
Actually, I started a thread about this in GD. Thread. It’s actually a huge moral issue for me.
I think, first of all, that one incorrect assumption you make in that thread is that people don’t consider the consequences of their choices. Plenty of people who choose to spend money on themselves (including me) are well aware that, in many cases, this money could be more usefully (and perhaps even morally) spent elsewhere. Most people also have an idea of certain things that they consider needless extravagances.
But, as your own account shows, even though this issue is very important to you, it still doesn’t stop you from spending money on things that make you happy. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re human beings, not automatons designed to function on minimal inputs of sustenance. Part of what makes us human is our ability to trascend our mere physical needs, to take pleasure in things that are not necessarily essential to our existence.
I think that a reasoned and measured critique of western consumerism is perfectly valid and appropriate, especially given the pace at which we use resources and pollute the world. I think it’s also valid toi ask whether many of us could, in fact, do more than we do to help those less fortunate. But i think that it is more productive to deal with these issues as general principles than to abuse someone for spending some money on their dog. And if you really want to critique individual instances of excessive consumerism and wasteful extavagance, i think there are more pressing concerns than a person who spends 400 bucks a year to help an animal companion.
Just MHO.
Agreed. But one has to start somewhere. And I will admit to Miller’s post striking a nerve because of my own interests and concerns.
Last night I left this thread on page 1, we are now on page fucking 6.
6 pages? 6 fucking pages of this shit? Again?
In a world desperately in need of love, kindness and compassion, we are pitting and obsessing about people showing love, kindness and compassion, albeit towards other species of sentient beings?
In a world where photojournalists are winning awards for pictures of vultures presiding over dying children, this is the best we can come up with?
This? This is who you are? This is the so-called “superior species”?
Pitting love of another sentient being? Are you fucking insane?
Are you such sorry, cold hearted, loveless fucks that you cannot just live and let live? That you have to upset a whole trunkload of useless fucking electrons to pit people whose worst crime is simply loving their pets? And referring to them as <gasp> kids?
Jesus.
Threads like this make me want to fucking puke.
This whole thread is definitley a tempest in a teapot. You want to refer to your pets as your kids? That’s fine. You want to point out that the level of worry a parent feels for their child is superior to any concern you could ever have for a pet? Makes sense, but you’re wasting your time. There can be no doubt that pet owners will never be as concerned about future education, employment, eating disorders, peer pressure, drug use, mental illness, or any other of the myriad afflictions that a pet will never face compared to a child. But if you love the shit out of your dog, you’re not going to be considering any of that anyways. The analogy can certainly be annoying, but it’s a trope that’s never going away.
More details please (it’s a good story).
Why did the dog start freaking out? (I’ve never owned a dog, but to have symptoms starting at age 4 seems odd. (Gradually transformed.) 
) What’s the breed (is it a skittish one?). Does your vet push a lot Prozac? How long has the dog been on the stuff? etc etc
Oh, and what share of your total dog-expenses go into puppy-uppers?
Scathing reply on your cherry-picked quote. If I had kids, it might even make sense.
I only cherry-picked the dumbest part of your post. And you dont have kids? Then I’d worry even more about your hypersensitivity - to be offended (in the extreme!). Come the fuck off of it. Nobody’s talking about feeding other people’s children to our pets. We gave up on that a long time ago.
Okay, I retract “in the extreme.” Now address my post.
Thank you. You managed to say the only sane thing in this thread, and in just three words.
Maureen, are you trying to say that there’s some sort of special link between strictly biological parents and their children? Does it like, float through the air on magic sunbeams and shoot into our brains through our eyes or something? How do humans “know” the difference between a biological child and an adopted one? Please try to explain the science to me. “I just gots a feeling in my guts you’ll never understand” will not suffice.