>>Respectfully, my basset hounds are as loved as if I gave birth to them myself. They both have had surgeries that easily cost in the thousands of dollars, MRIs, tests and multiple office visits and worth every single penney.<<
Hey, if you have the money and time, that’s great!
I’m very attached to our two year old maltipoo. I have to be. My wife is out of town a lot. He is very well trained and makes eye contact with me so much it is as if he knows what I am thinking. It can be downright spooky.
That said, if she were to die tomorrow, I’d get rid of the dog almost immediately. It’s a T-chart thing: reasons to keep him don’t even come close to the number of reasons to not have a dog.
You’ve heard the phrase, regarding movies, “suspending disbelief”? Well, that is what I can’t do with animals. No matter how human they appear to act, I see them as a poor facsimile. I cannot “suspend disbelief” that their reactions are not genuinely human. But that’s just me, and I know many do give them human qualities on an emotional level.
But if I had a “puppy” with the enlarged esophagus problem and all the special treatment (and hard earned money) that is going to involve throughout his life, the choice is pretty simple and obvious. And the longer you wait, the harder the decision. If the dog belonged to one of my children, I would use it as a teaching experience to help them understand the difference in value between humans and animals. It was done for me when I was a child and it has helped enormously.
BTW, we’re empty nesters. My wife wanted the dog as something to “nurture”. If I gave him away, I’d feel bad, for a while, but the benefits would last and last.
I have to agree with you. I love dogs as dogs. Dogs are cool because they are NOT people. Unless I really had the money to spare, I would not spend a lot of money keeping an ill dog alive. But that’s me, I don’t judge people who feel differently harshly.
The more prosperous a society the more money we are able to spend on our pets. Pets are a luxury. If we lived in a third world country or were just very poor we would not give pets such a high priority. The book The Yearling comes to mind.