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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Whatever happened to "his is part of our family. We love him like our kids."?? Now, it's "he is too expensive, let's just cut him loose"... [/quote]

If anyone loves their pet like a kid I feel sorry for their kids. [/quote]

Agreed. Our relationship and obligations to pets and kids are really different. A huge component to parenting is raising your kid to be a functional adult who will be independent and perhaps even have kids of their own. This is not just some bespoke idea about parenting, it's built in -- most kids outlive their parents (thankfully) so they need to be at a point where they can take care of themselves before you die. So much of what we do for kids is done with this in mind. This is why you treat a baby, a 2 year old, an 8 year old, a 15 year old, and a 30 year old really differently.

But that's not how it works for pets. You are responsible for your pet for the duration of your life and most of us will outlive our pets by decades. My obligation to my pet is to give him the best possible life I can in our home, to make sure he's got nutrition, safety, and hopefully comfort and joy. He will never live independently from me (or independently at all -- if he lived on his own he'd probably be dead within the year). So yeah, I assume I'm going to watch him die. I take no pleasure in that and don't want to hasten it, but it also changes the equation when he's very sick and likely nearing the end of his functional life, even if he does not technically have a terminal disease that will kill him imminently.

A pet dying is an inevitability. A child dying is a tragedy.  Confusing these is just weird.[/quote]

Well said.[/quote]

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