You forgot
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[li]rude bicyclists[/li][li]SUVs[/li][li]handicapped parking[/li][/ol]
I just had to say that I find it amusing to read a post with this content from a poster with the same name as my sister’s dog. Well, other than the exclamation point.
Sorry for the interruption. Carry on.
Then there’s what some bird owners (bird parents?) call their pets - “fids.” (Short for “feathered kids.”) There’s even a high-profile parrot trainer online who has named one of her parrots “Fid.”
UGH.
When people start talking about the animals’ “mommies” and “daddies” at the dog park, I know it’s time to go.
I get this a lot and I totally don’t understand it. Why would someone think that they should judge childfree people because they choose to spend their free time and money on pets?
I’ve been called selfish because I haven’t adopted kids. I am such a good and loving and caring person, after all. :rolleyes: I think that kids are cute, I enjoy hearing them laugh and play. I don’t want any of my own and I think that I am entitled to make my own choices about having them.
OTOPaw (just to be annoying), everyone who chooses to judge my life choices never seems to remember that time that I bought 30 bikers to help build a home in one day, or that I beg for jackets every winter to give to the homeless, or that I buy toys all year when they are on sale so I can give them to Toys for Tots runs. Some of which I run.
No, all they see is that I do cat rescue and judge me by that.
Now that I’m done being crabby about the cat vs human thing, I have a funny story about last names on scripts.
I had a cat called Bubba. He got old and sick. I have learned that buying people meds are much cheaper than getting them from the vet, if possible. So when Bubba need blood pressure meds I took the script to Costco. (Did you all know that you don’t need to be a member at the big box places to buy meds? Much cheaper when paying out of pocket.) As usual, I digress, but anyhow…
When I went to pick the pills up, the Pharmacist wanted to talk to me. He kept looking at the bottle and at me while he was telling me about the side effects and kept saying that I probably didn’t need to worry about them because the dosage was so low.
Finally, he looked at the bottle again and asked “Is Bubba your child?” When I told him that the meds were for my cat, he dropped the bottle and started laughing so hard he had water running down his face. The poor man had been trying to find a good way to tell me that my doctor had made a mistake because the dosage for a cat was so wrong for a human.
Yeah, the script was wrote out for Bubba Flatlined.
listen, folks, love is love. it knows no species!
OK, I’ll grant you that a lot of fish seem to be interchangeable. But when I kept sea monkeys, I could tell most of them apart. Not all of them, but most of them. I haven’t kept any fish (other than the sea monkeys) since I was about 15, though. Mostly, I had either a goldfish, or a betta. Bettas seem to have a personality, but goldfish didn’t, that I could tell.
Is that in human years or dog years? 
Tell us some more stories about your awesome family. Like this one How do you deal with living with a maniac? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
How long did it take for you to catch on that four dogs AND your brother in law had all been poisoned by a family member?
Please oh please tell all of us what it is like to be a real parent and a responsible dog owner!
Moderator note
This is inappropriate in this forum. If you want to call out someone else do in the pit not here.
That’s awesome.
I used to work as a vet tech, and our patients were referenced on all paperwork with the owner’s last name first, and the pet’s name second. So: Jones, Fluffy. One of our patients was “Free, BJ”. We were amused.
As for the OP: the work of taking care of our collective 4 dogs, 3 horses, many chickens, and 1 cat is approximately 1/100th of the work it seems like people put into a single child. I don’t consider any of these animals my literal kids (and certainly do not call them furkids or the like), but I do love them a lot, and they are not interchangeable. I have great respect for parents, but that lifestyle doesn’t work for everyone. Bitching about other people enjoying the things/animals they get pleasure from seems, I dunno, petty? Silly? Live and let live, I guess.
NM
Aesthetics (furrkidz) aside, love is love. You can dote upon a tree, a ballpoint pen, the fox which crosses the driveway every morning; it is all love. Love is infinite. Long ago I had a passionate argument with a friend (who did not like animals) who felt love expended upon animals was love lost to human beings. I took the view that love was infinitely expandable.
Forty years later, I believe my friend had a point. Love may be infinite but human individuals are not. You can only take care of so much, and the better you take care of one, the less attention you are forced to pay to another. But: people don’t have all that much choice about what and who they love.
I have always loved animals and prefer their company to that of almost all humans. I am simply made that way. I couldn’t be different even if I felt it was a sin.
Gooey sentimentality isn’t my style, but I recognize that it can be little more than a style. I know plenty of goat breeders for example who ooh and coo over their little goatlings as sappily as any toy poodle owner – but in a few months those kids will be in parts, in their freezer. As will mine.
I don’t much mind when other people call themselves their dog’s parents, or talk about their ‘furbabies’ etc. People are weird and overly sentimental about pet animals, in much of American culture.
But I could spit when people foist it on me. I don’t have kids, I have a dog and a cat. I am no ones ‘Mommy’ and I am very comfortable with owning my pets, as well as buying and selling them or others if I please. No, I didn’t ‘rescue’ or ‘adopt’ them. A coworker gave me my dog for free and I found my cat starving in an alley. I don’t consider getting a dog from a shelter to be noble, though I do disapprove of pet stores and puppy mills, and a lot of that is because they are vastly overpriced for a subpar product. Get a dog that suits your budget and purposes - purebreds from reputable breeders are the best choice if you want health and consistency in an animal of your preferred type. But far from cheap.
Of course I love my pets and I feel they have unique and entertaining personalities. I wouldn’t keep my shithead cat around at all if I didn’t love them completely illogically. But I don’t think I care or feel for them in at all the way I would a human child. ETA: I know I don’t, because I rather cheerfully put a dog I owned for 15 years to sleep a few months ago because she was becoming too difficult to fare for.
How do you get that? My point was that people who pretend (and yes, it is pretending) that they’re their pets’ parents is something that is mildly offensive because it trivializes actual parenting.
Then I went on to say that if you have such a desire to love and be connected to something, but don’t want to have kids, then maybe (assuming it’s the actual childbearing that’s the issue) you could adopt, or if not, then you could volunteer or help the elderly or otherwise use that love for something that helps other people, because God knows, there are enough people who could stand to get that love, instead of basically wasting it on an animal that can’t really conceive of what you’re doing or why you’re doing it. I didn’t specifically say children- if I had, then I’d have said it, not offered a series of alternatives beyond just having kids- I’d be happy if you volunteered for Meals on Wheels or at a homeless shelter or whatever.
They’re not mutually exclusive and nor is it contradictory to say those things at all. Maybe I should have been clearer- it’s entirely possible that I didn’t write it as well as I’d thought.
I have a bit of a personal axe to grind, because I have a lot of married friends who talk about their ‘kids’, and mean their dogs, and about how tough they are, and responsibility, etc… and I’m sitting there thinking “Oh, you have no idea… I wish you’d STFU, because actually having a kid is 100x harder than having a dog, even if it is a borderline retarded dog that’s too stupid to eat a hot dog.”
I’ve done more than enough to help other people, from caring for dying relatives to babysitting other peoples’ kids to helping soup kitchens and homeless shelters to working at a drug treatment clinic because I really do think treatment is preferable to incarceration to giving several gallons of blood in my lifetime.
You know what? I’ve done my time in the trenches.
Caring for other people is exhausting. I got burned out. So I care for my birds and my immediate family and don’t feel obligated to wear myself out trying to bandage every boo-boo. If you don’t like that, too bad. I don’t have to prove my altruism to you. I’m not adopting kids or taking meals to old people or doing all the rest of it because I’ve been there, done that and don’t give a fig if you think I’m doing enough or not. I don’t have to prove anything to you.
I’m with you on laughing at the cutesy bullshit. I’m with you at rolling eyes at people who call their pets ‘their kids’. I’m with you at being irritated by people bitching about how tough their self-inflicted situation is.
I’m just not with you when you set yourself up to dictate that someone elses resources should be spent on what you think is valid. I can’t figure out what the problem is, because your personal axe grinding seems to revolve around people treating / speaking of their pets as if they are on the same level as kids. Yet, what you think they should be doing has nothing to do with that. They could volunteer at Meals on Wheels, adopt kids, help the homeless and still love their pets and call them ‘furkids’ - they’re not mutually exclusive. Do you feel the same about people who spend their time and money on say… fishing? Should they spend that time and money and emotion on helping the homeless, or adopting children, or helping the elderly? Is it really about the resources they’re spending (since your solution is they should spend them elsewhere)?
It sounds to me that you’re just irritated because they are equating their pets with your kids, but you’re dragging this ‘they should be helping humanity’ argument into it to bolster your feelings. If that’s what’s happening, here’s your validation: Their experience in caring for their pets is vastly different from your experience raising your kids. I agree that raising children and owning pets are two completely different things that can’t be equated. If your friends constantly bitch about their self-inflicted choices, perhaps you need better friends.
Yes, we should ALL do more to help ease suffering in the world. Every second spent reading this thread should instead be directed towards helping create a better world. But we don’t - we all indulge in our own interests. I agree your friends sound irritating. But you know what else is irritating? Someone telling you that you shouldn’t spend your own time, money and emotions on things that interest you, but instead should devote them to what that somebody thinks is important. What about you? Do you have any hobbies, interests, anything you love doing on a rainy Sunday? You shouldn’t do that you know - you should be out there feeding the homeless, helping the elderly and adopting as many children as you can afford.
Just let me know whenever you need a [del]pot plant-sitter[/del] fish/dog-sitter, and I’ll be happy to help you out! 
Maybe you are just an extremely exceptional individual and something that is so seemingly simple to you (taking care of a pet) is exceedingly difficult for all of us loser pet owners who are not brave enough to go out of the house and wipe someone’s abandoned grandma’s ass. If your idiot friends are finding this simple task of taking care of another living thing so hard - hard enough to dare to compare it to your child rearing (which is super, super hard) - then do you really really think they should be left alone with other breathing things?
You should really just be glad that us pet people keep to ourselves and our pets and don’t go spreading our ineptitude across humanity. Dogs is all we can handle.
This. That’s why I care about this issue.