Your animals aren't your kids.

Cite?
::: d&r :::

Sheesh. What’s with the obsession with sperm, eggs, and linguistics. Making another baby is one of the most destructive things you can do to the environment. Cutting someone from slack for digging their dog is one of the least.

Same here. I simply don’t want the responsibility anymore. They’re too high maintenance. With cats, you can split for a long weekend and no one suffers, no sitter has to be hired to care for them and you probably won’t come home to a trashed house (though with my cats…this is always a possibility ;).

I don’t want to walk a dog, pick up dog shit, replace screens, protect the neighbors from an attack, buy a fence, replace my furniture, train it, groom it, or replace friend’s stockings when the dog ruins them. I had a dog. Loved him. Hated the job.

It’s hard to be a good dog owner. Too many incompetents are already doing it. I don’t need to add myself to the mix.

If that’s what you meant all along, say so from the beginning. As a biologist, the idiotic false distinction that “humans aren’t animals, dammit, we’re humans” drives me crazy. It’s been unbelievably destructive to our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Um, none of which is particularly applicable to this thread (except perhaps in reverse,) so I guess that would make this a highjack.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Seriously, why do you care so much? I’m especially curious about this bit:

I’m just curious whether you ever spend any money on non-essential items? Do you have a DVD player? Do you buy beer? Go out to the movies? Bet on the football?

Because you realize, i assume, that there are kids out there “who could benefit from the money you’re wasting.” For all you know, the people who spend money on their animals might be spending money that they would otherwise spend on a video card upgrade or a weekend on the Eastern Shore. If you believe that money should always go to the places where it does the most good (by your own criteria), i’m curious to know whether you practice what you preach. Do you deny yourself all the little pleasures of life in order to give to charity or help the poor and downtrodden?

It has gotten to the point that if I say I don’t want a child–I am looked at funny and questioned about that. But you have pets! They cry. Children are great companions! they declaim. We love our children!

That’s great–enjoy your kids. While I’ll enjoy my lack of poopy diapers, lack of head lice, no high doctor bills, no getting up at 0300 to feed the baby or go to the emergency room with a feverish child. Please control your child–no I don’t want to listen to them lie in the aisles and scream at the grocery store because you won’t buy them candy. No, it is not cute how he picks his nose. Oh, look-the kid escaped and is in my yard again–call the neighbors and tell them to come get junior…
I like kids–I think they’re great. I just don’t want one. To me, kids are a huge responsibility that you have to be prepared to care for for the next 18 years, and sometimes much longer. (Sorry, I have to leave the part out about the possibility of a child dying. I won’t go there.) A miniature you who will follow you around (that drives me nuts), look at you with puppy eyes and vomit on your bed (kids do that too, I hear)? That has never made any sense to me-they are there and too many of them thanks to irresponsible people who don’t know how to use birth control.

But speak of this observation to parents and prepare to be dressed down, lectured to or even yelled at. “You just don’t understand” is usually the retort.

I guess I don’t.

Wow. Just wow. You know, Trunk, who the hell are you to pass judgement on people who refer to their pets as their “kids?” Really, who the fuck are you?

Do you really think the majority of these people TRULY believe that having pets is the exact same thing as raising children?

They/we don’t. My partner and I do not have kids nor do we want kids. We love our animals, refer to them as our “kids.” But we’re not fucking delusional. We realize we will never delight in the experience of going broke putting our “kids” through college.

I ran myself into debt caring for a sick cat. It was my fucking choice. It was my fucking money. I don’t put myself on a cross because of it. I’m not asking you or anyone else to drag me out of the hole I’m in. So why the fuck do you care?
By the way? Do you have kids Truck? The human kind?

My MIL is like that, dogs are her life. Some of you may of known my SO had medical problems, well in the first instance a few years ago we needed to collect money as we could not afford treatment.
When I approached my MIL she did not have any to spare. Anywho we raised the money and while my SO was still in the hospital, my MIL’s dog got hit by car. Her dog was 13 y/o or so, a black lab. She had to gall to call my SO and tell her that she had to mortgage her house to pay the vet bill. While my SO was still in the hospital.

So that tended to turn my stomach a little. The kicker? 3 years prior to my her diagnosis, we used our savings to buy her mom a car as she could not afford one after her husband passed.

Not all breeds. I can’t even smell my Elkhound when she gets into bed.

Now shedding’s a whole different matter…

Plus, they stink.

While I generally agree that people who treat animals as children strike me as brightly and cheerfully stark raving bonkers…

There are kids out there who would benefit from the money you’re wasting on the computer and internet connection you used to post this comment, and the computer and internet connection I used to read it and respond, yet neither of us appears to consider those diversions of resource a terrible crime. Where do you get off telling people how they should spend their money?

OH No! :eek:

Trunk burning our dogs.

I already burning my dog.

Oh, baloney. I am sure (having been there) that many a youing couple has been harassed “lovingly” by any number of people to get on it and provide grandchildren/cousins/whatever. It happens–and it is just as annoying when it does. I doubt anyone here would excuse that MIL or doting grandfather to be–or the nosey co-worker/neighbor/friend of your mother’s. So, why is it ok for pet owners to try to convert others? Why the implication that IF you don’t own a pet, you are somehow not emotionally open or loving or giving? People who dont’ have kids are not looked at as mutant.

To go through this whole judgement process with KidLite aka pets is ludicrous. Given that anyone may have allergies, bad memories of pets, a distaste for the chores that surround pets, to be told that “you don’t know what you’re missing” or (and this has been said to me) “Her dog died–she feels just like you would if one of your kids died.” is just plain WRONG.
A dog is NOT a child. You cannot equate the love for a child with the love for a dog–not even Lassie. Those people who do so–have obviously never had kids, been around kids, had nieces or nephews that they were close to. It is NOT the same. Nor should it be. Why should it be?

What is wrong with just enjoying your dog as a dog? Train them to be obedient and well behaved. Neuter them, please (gee, the kid analogy kind of breaks down here), clean up their shit off the streets and parks, please. But don’t expect everyone to join the love fest. I’m sorry you’re lonely and that you crave the constant dependence and “love” that a dog brings you. And hey, dogs are a great way to meet people. But a dog is not a child, ever.

Chao --the point is that many (my sisters and mother for a start) DON’T recgnize the difference. My mother has always put the dogs first–to the extent of making my 2 year old son stay on a bar stool, so that the hyper insane Dalmation could stay in the kitchen (Dalmation likes to bite people–except for my mother). I flat out told her no-her grandson should not have to stay on a chair, out of the way, to make house room for an insane dog. And she is not the only one who does this kind of shit. Occasionally I am told to not sit in a certain chair at a friend’s house–it’s for the dog/cat. What the hell is that?

To each his own, I suppose.

You have a right to feel what you feel about this, but you have no right whatsoever to tell me or any others how we can feel about our pets.

So fuck off. It is really none of your business.

No animal ever treated me with the kind of abuse and prejudice that a lot of people have. I love my pets dearly and they bring joy into my home. I feel sorry for people who are too shallow to appreciate or understand that, because they’re really missing out.

As someone who has remained childless, I beg to differ. Something must be wrong with me if I don’t want kids - I have heard it before. :rolleyes:

Again, you are trying to tell me how I can feel about something. Just because I declare a strong feeling for my animals does not lessen what you feel for your children - not one bit. Why do parents think they have a monopoly on strong feelings of love? You saying it isn’t the same love doesn’t make it true!

Bravo.

Except “you can’t tell me how to feel” doesn’t really make a point.

If you really want to defend your silliness, start with something like this:

“My pets are equivalent to kids, because. . .”

snerk

I was going to add: You don’t feel the same feelings for your cat as you do for your children, and that is fine for you. I am different. I fel strongly about my animals. people (especially parents) always try to diminish our (animal people’s) feelings.

What gives you the right to tell us how WE can feel?