Your animals aren't your kids.

The BBQ Pit
341

I am not Maureen, but I will do my best to address it. It feels like there is a special link from me to my daughter, whom I worked so hard to bring to the world and spent so much of myself nursing and caring for. It feels extraordinary and magical. It certainly goes beyond what I felt even for my closest pet, or any other child that I have helped care for. There is no way I could have imagined what this bond would have felt like before I experienced it. I did not expect it.

That said, I can’t bring myself to believe that fathers, step parents, or adoptive parents etc. don’t or can’t feel a bond as close and as magical as the one I feel for my daughter. Just because the bond I feel seems to me to stem from our shared biology as she grew under my heart doesn’t mean that is the reality. Nor am I so naive as to believe all mothers feel a bond to their babies, let alone one so profound as the one I share with my daughter.

I also do not think that any of the arguments about a child’s future and your responsibilities for college etc. should be considered into this. What of parents of mentally disabled children? Do you think that all of them love their childern less than I do mine? More to the point, my feelings for my daughter started befor she was able to talk or do much else than breathe and nurse. At that point reasonably intelligent dog was more emotionally supportive and a better conversationalist as the dog would have different facial expressions.

342

MY BOLDING:

I am surprised by the part on Fathers. I have always felt and as a Loving Father of Two, I still believe that on average the Mother does have a closer Bond.
I do not limit this to just Birth Mothers either. I think even adoptive mothers in general have a closer bond than a Bio-Father.
I would conjecture this is down to a genetic level.
Please note, I know there are plenty of exceptions, I am carefully trying to use terms like average and in general. Also the above cannot be cited as It is just my opinion and observations over my life.

Jim

343

Hentor, in response to your post directed at me. The woman with the cat was inappropriate with her comments. Unfortunately it just isn’t just animal lovers who make stupid and inappropriate comments. Look around this forum for a while and just admire the glory that is human stupidity.

I think one of the things that you must understand about the comparisons between child/pet, is that we simply don’t have an appropriate vocabulary for explaining how we feel about our pets. For example; how can I explain that I don’t want my dog tied up in the back yard, except to ask if you would like you kid tied up in the back yard? I mean, I’m not saying that my dog is equivalent to your kid, but I am saying that he’s not a dog that gets tied up in the back yard. I don’t have the proper vocabulary to express why I feel the need to get up two hours early so I can walk my dog except to say to you, that you would want to take you kid out for a nice long walk if he was going to be trapped in the house all day.

The problem is that there is no baseline for the way people feel about their pets, while there is a strict baseline for the way the feel about their children. We know that everyone should love their children to the exclusion of others. However, it’s not cruel for a Shepherd not to love his dog, but to depend upon it. It’s not cruel for my sister to find her dog a nuisance that is simply tolerated because the children love it. It’s not cruel for professional mushers to keep kennels of dog teams, but not to let them in. On the other hand, it’s not wacked out for my mother to get angry when my brother calls her dog “that thing”, or for me to have bought my house where I did because my dog would like it. Because there is no baseline, while you might find it OK to have an “outdoor dog”, I find it rather odd. While you might find it normal to have a dog confined to a kennel, I couldn’t do that to my dogs. So basically, when I say ”would you tie out your child” what I’m really doing is defining my relationship with my pet. I’m setting my baseline.

I know that probably doesn’t make sense but I’m doing my best.

344

I wonder if there’s something going on inside the poor animal’s ears that makes normal, everyday noises sound like a nearby thunderclap.

345

I wish that were the case for me.

At any rate, when I’m dropping a day’s wages on a meal for a special occasion (birthday, anniversary), it does spoil it for me to have the ambiance (for which I chose the restaurant surely as much as the food) shattered by the sights and sounds of a day-care center.

I’ll admit to being biased by the fact that my own parents would not take us anywhere nicer than the equivalent of an Olive Garden or Applebee’s until we were in our mid-teens, and had demonstrated the ability to act “correctly” at somewhere nice.

346

Could this be a “white van at the corner” situation? If there are 20 kids in the restaurant, 1 is acting up, and 19 are behaving, you’ll only notice the one? If you’re actively looking for misbehaving kids, you’re much more likely to find them, and to remember marginal behavior as completely intolerable.

347

I can’t speak for YaWanna, but I really do notice well-behaved children in places like restaurants. I have even complimented the parents on having such polite, well-behaved children in such situations.

A funny story: My sister was driving down to stay at my mom’s for the weekend, and brought her two children (a boy and a girl) along. My mom met them at a restaurant (a Perkins), and brought another of my nieces along. Following the meal, the waitress commented to my sister how polite her oldest daughter was (who was, in fact, her niece and not her daughter). My sister laughed it off, and we joked about what monsters her “other two” kids must be!

348

I appreciate that you are trying. However, it seems to me that you are trying to define your relationship with your pet (which you understand intimately) by referring to a parent’s relationship with a child (which I presume you do not have direct knowledge of). I’m still wondering why this is necessary. You understand the depth of feeling you have for your pet. I grasp the depth of feeling you have by your saying that it would pain you to tie him or her up. There isn’t much need to extend to an analogy involving pet and child for me to get it - it doesn’t serve a purpose for me.

Your point about the larger variability inherent in the relationship between owner and pet relative to the (one hopes) range restriction in the parent-child relationship further illustrates the dissimilarities between these constructs (pet-child).

It really isn’t just about a range of love and returned love; responsibility and connectivity which may or may not overlap. It is a matter of being qualitatively different. When most parents look at their children, they see all of their hopes and dreams, all of their fears and failings. They are their future and their past. Their children are themselves and the culmination of all that came before them. They are their greatest validation and their most damning indictment. Children evoke emotions that are extremely complex and simultaneously so pure that it is not really possible to think of analogies, and at some level the implication of any sort of equivalence is, well, offensive. In my book it is generally a very mild and understandable offense for which I can easily make accomodations. In return, I don’t mean to be offensive or cause pain in making this observation.

349

Hentor, in seven pages, that’s the best post of this entire damn thread. In fact, it was perfect. Well said.

350

I’m not sure if I can add much but since I read through this monster of a thread I might as well try. For the record, I have no pets and no children.

I think the crux of the matter is that when some pet lovers refer to their pets as their ‘children’ some parents feel that this is somehow taking away their ‘props’ for their love of their own child. When they hear someone make a statement as to their own values and priorities they are interpreting that statement as a judgement on* their own* priorities and values. Therefore, when someone tries to draw an equivalency to give a frame of reference, they feel their own value have been diminished.

For example, where someone to remark that “they love Miller Lite like you love Guinness” initial reaction would be incredulous to say the least. There is no way to compare their affection for something as weak and bland as Miller Lite to my complex, rich, full-bodied devotion to Guinness. However, the rational part of me would realize that they are simply trying to connect with me by finding an common point of experience and simultaneously trying to let me know how devoutly they hold to their very very bad taste in beer. They are not comparing Miller Lite to Guinness, they are trying to draw a comparison between* themselves* and me.

Thus, I believe that when people hear, “I love my dog like you love your kid” they are hearing, “my dog is as important as your kid” rather then, “my dog is as important to me as your kid [rare]” or the more accurate, “I really really love my dog and am trying to give you a point of reference so you can understand that.” I’ll get back to the second phrase in a moment since I don’t believe that’s what most pet lovers are actually trying to say but, as I said, I’ll come back to that. Actually, probably about half of them are still hearing the latter and that offends them too because they take it as a judgement of their child rather then a reflection of the speakers values; if that makes any sense.

It’s a very normal, emotional response but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still pointless and irrational.

Now, as to the “my dog is as important to me as your kid is to you” phrase I don’t believe that in most cases the speaker is actually trying to convey that they care for their dog just as much as they care for the person’s child but, once again, they are trying to convey a frame of reference.

However, even if someone was trying to imply that, “their dog is as or more important to them to someone else’s kid” who cares? They are stating their own values, in no way are they demeaning your own. Once again, it’s a normal emotional response to be bothered knowing that someone cares for their own dog more then they do for your own child but that doesn’t mean it’s a rational response.
To restate again, almost no one is saying that children and pets are equivalent in the big picture, what they’re saying is, “I love my dog, my dog is a priority in my life, don’t fuck with my dog.” They are giving a frame of reference for their own values and using some one’s children as useful shorthand. In a sense they are letting you know that, “if it’s not someone you would do to your kid, trust that I won’t want to do it to my dog.”

351

Sigh.

“were someone not where someone”

I’m sure there’s more errors like this but I don’t have the heart to look for them.

I’m going to try to be very careful with this next analogy because I want to make it clear that I’m drawing an analogy to the mechanism of the emotional response itself and not the the values that are provoking that response.

The whole SSM issue.
I am not saying those who object to pet lovers referring to their pets as children are any way equivalent to those who object to same sex marriages.

However, the mechanism of the emotional response is the same.

Many people who object to SSM do so because they feel it is demeaning to the concept of marriage as a whole. They feel that same sex relationships simply cannot be compared to traditional marriages. They feel that, “emotions [involved] are extremely complex and simultaneously so pure that it is not really possible to think of analogies, and at some level the implication of any sort of equivalence is, well, offensive.”
Now, there is of course a vast difference between comparisons of children and pets and SSM relationships and MF relationships [same species to begin with]. However, the emotional mechanism is the same. They cannot comprehend that a SSM relationship could in any way reflect the same sort of love and dedication found in a MF relationship.

352

But both of the parties in a SSM are human.

353

Which I mentioned.

Once again, I’m not saying that the values of those who object to SSM and those who object to pet lovers referring to their pets as children are at all similar. What I’m saying is that the emotion mechanism which causes offense is equivalent.

Many of those who object to SSM do so on the basis that the love between a man and a woman is unique, can in no way be replicated in a SS relationship. Thus, they feel that someone else drawing any sort of equivalency is demeaning to their own relationship and therefore offensive.

Those who object to the whole kid/pet issue do so on the basis that the love between parent and child is unique and can no way be replicated in a pet/owner relationship. Thus, they feel that someone else drawing any sort of equivalency is demeaning to their own love and therefore offensive.

Both are perfectly valid and understandable emotional responses. That doesn’t make either correct.

354

Actually he has a point, many who are against SSM specifically mention that it will demean the concept of marriage.
This is similar to some of the arguments in this thread being made against the People who treat their pets as surrogate kids.

(please note only adding a POV, I support gay marraige and attended my BIL’s SSM & I don’t think the Human to pet relationship is on par with Parent to kids relationship)

Jim

355

Just to put this in a possibly less inflamatory manner I’ll try a different situationi.

“I love my kid like you love your kid.”

If the listener had a low opinion of how much the speaker actually cared for their child, there’s a good chance for offense. Why? Because they felt that by drawing a comparison between the the “pure, beautiful link they shared with their child” and the speaker’s crappy, distant relationship with their own offstring that the comparison is demeaning.

356

Meh. Yeah. But I wasn’t objecting to the comparison as a parent, so much as I was as a proponent of SSM. If that makes sense.

I dunno. I kinda think I’ve chewed all the taste out of this one.

357

Perfectly understandable and I probably could have been clearer.

I wasn’t trying to draw a comparison between SSM and peoples’ love for their pets. Likewise, I’m not trying to draw a comparison between peoples’ love for their pets and and peoples’ love for each other.

I was attempting to compare the emotional objection to SSM vs “my dogs are my kids.”

My point is the whole, “If they say they feel this way then that demeans how I feel” response is normal, but irrational and pointless.

Now, if these pet owners started saying, “my pets are my kids so I want a tax break” then that brings a practical issue to the table and allows for rational objections.

And, just for the record I am also a SSM proponent.

358

You know, I have gone through this whole thread and it really comes down to:

My love is better than your love.

My situation is totally unique from yours, so don’t try to empathize

and

My sacrifice is greater than yours, so you are immoral if you spend money on something I don’t like.

Love is an emotion, plain and simple. It cannot be quantified or even properly explained in words. It is, broken down, a multitude of chemical reactions in the brain that result in feelings and behaviors like: loyalty, compassion, trust, concern, fear and almost any other emotion. How many of you cannot say that when you experience love, it almost encompasses every single emotion at one point in time? For someone to dictate what love is greater than another, is an exercise in futility and is denigrating.

Someone who loves their pet as much as another loves their child is not crazy, wacked or insane. It is an emotional reaction. The issue here is a sense of love, not of a childhood bond or a sacrifice or anything else. You do not have to be a parent to know what love is, you don’t have to be a pet owner to know what love is, you don’t have to be married to know what love is… etc. Each of these conditions, can and may, teach us a different aspect of love. How that love is experienced is directly related to the individual psychology of the individual involved.

In our society, all of us, constantly try to “one up” each other. I know all of you have experienced this at one point or another in your lives. Your speaking to someone, they are talking about a problem, you try to relate, and they say “you just don’t understand”. Most of you parents out there will probably get frustrated some time in your child’s teenage years when they get their heart broken for the first time and you try to explain how it will get better. They will scoff at you, just like you did to your parents, and assert you just don’t understand.

However, we all really do understand that the world is a relative place. What is important to most Americans is insulting to most sub-saharan African poor. I work in a museum, my husband in a prison. I supervise no one, he supervises 350 employees. It is hard for both of us at times, when I want to complain about work (an annoying person or what) and he retorts with a story about how he just had to trudge through shit laced water to deal with a disruptive inmate who was flooding the ranges and throwing urine and feces on his staff, or on him. Sometimes I immediately feel as if he is saying that my problems don’t matter, especially when he says something like, “if I only had your problems to worry about.” However, because we have the relationship we do, we try to bridge that “relative” gap, and understand that a bad day for me, is just as impacting as a bad for him.

If you really think about, you can always think of someone worse off, or better off than yourself. Some people with an overwhelming sense of superiority will try to claim that they are always aware of this and put “everything into perspective” at all times. However, we all know this is not true. Your burrito burning in the microwave could be the event that brings you to tears while a woman who loses her 5th child in 10 years because of poverty crys as well. Is her cry any more of an expression of unhappiness as yours? They are emotionally the same, although we can all agree the circumstances are remarkably different.

If we continue to debate about how important someone elses emotions are, we become entrenched in an unwinnable debate. Trunk’s pet peeve is the result of an emotional reaction he experiences when in contact with a particular stimuli… henceforth, in many ways, the fact of hearing a person call a dog a “kid” is enough to cause him to rant. So, in a lot of ways, his emotional reaction to this relatively benign stimulus could be considered irrational. However, his emotional reaction is indeed valid to himself.

Is this to say that we can never try to organize and prioritize events that should have more impact than others? Absolutely not. It would be just as wrong to trivialize true human suffering and compare it to a bruised knee. But, when the issue is as trivial as a person stipulating that they feel a “parent-child” form of love to their pet, then that divide becomes infintesimal, because in the world of “love” there is no way to state absolutes.

359

Lissa:How dare you post something so rational after 7 pages.

Do you love your rationality more than ours?

Great post, good summary. I think very true.
To Quote the two prophets I admire most: :wink:
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.

Jim

360

I’ve actually read most of this monster thread, except for skimming some of the back and forth regarding adoptiion and maternal instincts. Maybe I missed it and maybe I’m way to late, but I don’t remember reading about some things I’d like to add. I’m gonna leave cats out of this, since I don’t know enough about cats. I’ve lived with them, and can understand the appeal, but it’s not for me.

Humans made dogs. We created them. And to some extent we created them in our image. There are somewhere between 300 and 400 different true breeds depending on what country you look at. Jack Russels were only recognized here in Sweden a couple of years ago, by the Swedish Kennel Club, but it’s obviously been a distinctive breed for much longer.

There are breeds for many purposes. Watch dogs (rottweiler), shepherds (border collie), hunting dogs (spaniels), and those that are just pets (pugs).
If you look at the breeds that are like pets, they all have a human-baby type appearance: small, flattish face, large eyes. Almost all breeds are cute as puppies (german shepherd puppies and rottweiler puppies are adorable, as grown ups, not so much), but the pet breeds retain there puppy like quality throughout their lives. These breeds have been created as substitute for children, maybe even for those that have human babies as well. They are bred to be pampered and I believe most of them would have a hard time surviving in the wild (depending on climate and available food resources - survival chances of a pug in Sweden or Minnesota during winter would be quite low I think).

When humans created dogs, we gave them something we might not have bargained for, but it has certainly strengthened the bond: mind.
Dogs have mind. They dream, they play, they get jealous, they are opportunistic, they display a whole range of emotions and reactions that they’ve got from humans. That doesn’t make them humans of course, but anyone who’s spent a lot of time with a dog knows that dogs are indeed capable of thoughts and reactions that in some weak way mimic human thoughts and reactions.

Dogs have been living with humans for about 13.000 years. In evolutionary terms, it might not be so long, but it’s long enough. If we count 25 years as a generation changeover for humans, that means 520 generations of humans, but let’s give dogs three years and we get about 4.000 generations. Through selective breeding, we’ve pushed evolution of wolves and jackals in a direction of our desire for longer than any other animal (or plant for that matter). I’ve read speculation that humans could not have settled to be farmers without the aid of dogs (which helped watch and protect the crops and the herds, we had dogs about 4.000 years prior to having goats). It’s no wonder that the bond between humans and dogs is very, very strong.

As pets go, and as animals, they’re pretty damn smart. Chimps, dolphins, primates - they’re all smarter than dogs, but dogs benefit from living in close proximity to humans. A dog can, with proper stimulation, learn a couple of hundred human words. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not ust a tone of voice, they do know difference between a number of nouns and some verbs. Dogs learn and keep learning. Someone upthread said something about dogs reaching a certain point and not going further. Well, they will never be rocket scientists, but they do keep learnig and evolving through their lives. The difference between a puppy and a two year old is superficially great, but in terms of how their brains work, the difference is greater between a two year old and a four year old.

And hile dogs are dogs and not human, they do have very distinctive personalites, not just between breeds but between individuals as well. And we take them from momma dog at eight weeks, to make them bond with us the owners. That we, we mold them individually too. I hate early mornings and Buster is a sleepyhead too. It’s 11.20 in the morning here and he’s still snoring in his crate. Our first walk this morning was at nine. It’s so obvious to me that we imprint much of ourselves on dogs. A person that’s afraid of the dark will get a dog that’s afraid of the dark too, someone who gets a dog for protection will get a protective dog, because we transfer so much emotional stimuli to the dog.

A dog owner knows this. Having a dog, that’s constantly evolving and is formed in large parts by the personality of the dog owner, makes it very easy to start thinking of them as “my kids”. Dogs adapt easily too. in maybe ten or twenty generations, they’ve gone from living off leftovers and what they can scrounge in the yard, to living indoors and being family members. I’m not sure they disaprove.

Buster is a brindle boxer, a few months from being three years old. He’s a very gentle dog, but of course, being a boxer, he’s a very silly dog too. He brings a lot of oy to me, and no, I didn’t get him because I’m lonely or alone. In fact, he’s extended my social circle to about double. I’ve gained at least two really good new friends (something that happans way more seldom for people over 40 than the when we’re kids) and about 15 casual acquaintances.

Buster is a dog. He’s also a person. And he’s at daycare for about $250 per month. I’m sure that makes me a bad person.