Trailer Park Feminist* has a post up that I am totally in agreement with. I’ve seen this whole, "Americans love their pets better than they love their kids" thing time and time again in various communities. It’s irritating.
We love our animals, we dress them up in little doggy clothes and put them in little doggy purses and carry them around, but does that equate loving them more than kids? I mean, we put our kids in little cute outfits and carry them around in slings, right? Isn’t that the same difference?
But I never did sit up all night with my dog with the shower on at full blast because he had croup. And my dog has never pooped all over me, as all three of my children have managed to do at one point or another. And if my kid suddenly started crapping all over the floor or biting everyone, I wouldn’t rehome him or take him to be euthanized. I sure would with my dog. Don’t get me wrong, I would try behavior modification with my dog, but at some point, I’d move on, and I wouldn’t do that with my kids.
I have a very good friend whose dog suddenly turned vicious. We’re not talking about a dog who accidentally strangled a kid, I’m talking about a dog who suddenly turned vicious. After trying behavior modification and taking the dog to a trainer and the vet and everything else she could possibly think of, the dog was just mean and went around biting or trying to bite people. So she had him put down. It was one of the hardest things she ever had to do, I talked to her several times that day and she was so down about it, my heart broke for her. But think about it, if that had been her kid, would she have put the kid down? No.
So do we love our dogs more than we love our children? Come on, Gary Bauer. Way to take an isolated incident and turn it into a "disturbing trend". (And I’m not even gonna get into the "people are choosing having pets over having children" debate. That’s just amusing.)
*Someone turned me on to TPF and I don’t remember who it was. If you were the person that linked me to her blog, please email me so I can thank you!
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I should probably remain anonymous when I say this but I really can't get into the "love" for a pet that much. I like the idea that they create a form of responsibility for a child in caring for it but when I hear stories of people paying thousands of dollars for chemo for their do to undergo cancer treatment, I remain confused. Sure Lassie was a hero but Fido is just a dog.
Posted by: Kristen | June 1st, 2007 8:01 am |
I have a dog that I love with all my heart. And my kids love the dog so much it breaks my heart, but the dog is at the end of the day a dog. There is no comparison, between kids and a dog. Just hearing them linked in the same sentence is absurd to me. If godforbid something happened to my dog, I think the hardest thing for me would be the pain it would cause my kids. But, I would get another dog. I would be sad but don't even think I would take the day off from work. And the truth is, from my dog's point of view, I'm pretty sure that if tomorrow, she went to live with another family that took really good care of her and loved her like we do, she'd be perfectly happy. So, I'm with Kristen.
Posted by: Judy | June 1st, 2007 10:23 am |