I'm not saying that they "love them too much," or even that they spoil them.
Lacking that innate sense, many new dog owners turn their pets into "substitute children" or "practice babies" instead of letting them be what they are: dogs. They don't know what's natural and normal for a cat or dog, and they don't have an innate awareness of what constitutes healthy, appropriate behavior between humans and companion animals. Something else is going on, and I think it's this: a lot of people today don't have simple animal sense.
People give up their pets for a variety of reasons good and bad, but turning it into a huge hate-filled psychodrama seems to be a phenomenon exclusive to new parents. When I wrote about similarly stressed-out families who had to give up their pets because they were losing their homes to a foreclosure, no one I interviewed expressed any kind of blame, resentment or anger toward their dogs and cats. New moms and dads get lectures on animal cruelty, dog training and responsible pet ownership, all of which can be summed up as some form of "suck it up." Your dog's driving you crazy? Is that his fault? Of course not, they say it's yours, for failing to plan or to train or whatever magic preventive or curative approach a particular dog lover favors.īut I think both sides are missing the point.
What I was not prepared for was the depth of my hatred for beings I once claimed to love, and how quickly the switch happened."ĭog lovers don't exactly respond with sympathy to parents who not only want to give the boot to the family pets in favor of their new baby, but profess to hate them. Or this, from an online column entitled "Take my Pets, Please": "We had been warned that the pets would get the shaft once the baby became the focal point of our existence.
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