Come On Pet Owners, How Poor Are you Really?

Often I encounter a pet owner pleading online for help with their sick, injured, or dying, pet. They always seem to have the line “I cannot afford to take it to a vet, please help”. I roll my eyes nearly every time I see this, my typical response is “If you can afford a computer and Internet service, you should be able to afford to take your pet to the veterinarian.”. Yet when you say this to somebody their typical response is something like “I am on my cell phone!”. To me there is no difference, if you can afford a computer and Internet, or a cell phone, you darn well can afford to take your pet to the vet.

Veterinarian care is expensive, no doubt about it, but so are many things, coffee, shoes, car payments, and a lot of other things that really are luxuries not necessities.

Lower income people who want to have pets need to understand that sometimes pet ownership means making a sacrifice on other things in order to put money away for emergency vet care. And believe me I was there once myself (lower income I mean).

I worked part time for minimum wage raising a kid as a single parent, paying a mortgage and so forth, even with the widows pension I got (my first husband had passed away) I was still living on less than a welfare mom with one kid. I made sacrifices and lived frugally. I had no cable, no Internet, no cell phone, so ya, it does piss me off when some jerk driving a $15,000 new car bitches about not being able to afford vet care for their pet.

At least get your pet to the veterinarian so you know what is wrong, how bad it is, and how much it will cost, before you rush around taking advice from strangers on the Internet who may not know what they are talking about.

Owning a pet should be a serious commitment, that animal's life and health are your responsibility. If it dies because you were too cheap to sacrifice a cup of coffee, or could not live without a cell phone, it is your fault.

Don't be going online looking for free veterinarian help, complaining you are poor when you have 20 pairs of shoes in your closet and case of beer in the fridge. That ain't poverty.

I should add that I sympathetic when a person cannot pay expensive treatment costs, as these costs can get into thousands of dollars, but I have little sympathy for the person who gets a puppy then complains two weeks later when it is sick that they cannot afford to take it to the vet, what on earth were they doing getting a puppy in the first place? My sympathies are with the pup.

The same thing for the person who breeds there dog then finds themselves in an emergency situation requiring a caesarian section, a common risk in breeding some dogs, and complains they cannot afford it – again, then why did they bred their dog?

For the lower income people there are many cheap pets, or simply do as I did (I use to work part time for minimum wage only but always had money for my pet's needs), live frugally and below your means, and if you cannot do that – do not get a pet.

There is also no excuse for not spaying or neutering a cat or dog, if this is a financial concern you think you cannot make, adopt one that has already been fixed rather than taking one that still requires this somewhat expensive surgery – also note it is cheaper to fix male animals than females.

I could go on and on, the point is most people have money to spend on their pets, but have chosen to spend it on other things instead.   To those complaining that they cannot afford vet care for their pet, I ask "How much is your cell phone bill?".  Your pet is a financial commitment, deal with it!

Cats Kill Birds, so do You, Deal with it

Sometimes I encounter people who are very angry at cat owners who allow their cats outside. One of the reasons for this is the fact that house cats who go outside kill birds. I am certain even the cat's owners are not particularly thrilled with this behavior, but to be fair human activities kill a lot more birds than do house cats.

Cats are carnivores, by their very nature they have a high prey drive, we consider this an advantage if they kill a mouse, and a disadvantage if they kill a pretty little songbird. It is not that the cat is doing something intentionally evil, it is doing what is natural to do. People argue that house cats are not a natural species, and they have been introduced to areas where they did not exist, well... the same can be said of humans.

Why don't we take any blame for our own actions on killing birds? I am not even talking about the billions of chickens we slaughter, but am referring to the millions the song birds we kill. Do we dare measure how many songbirds are killed in a year by our own actions and see how that compares to how many birds cats kill?

How many songbirds die when their nesting area in the rain forest is cut? How many songbirds die when they smash into skyscrapers as they migrate in the night? How many songbirds die as the result of pollution or chemicals? How many song birds are consumed as delicacies in countries such as Cypress? How many songbirds die as the result of human activities every day?

Sure, cats kill birds, it's what they do, they are carnivores, prey hunters. Humans kill birds all the time with no thought of eating them. People come around and clean up city streets in the wee hours of the morning to remove bodies of birds killed on their migration, tossed in to the garbage. Why are we always blaming the cats?

Has anyone who is mad at cats changed their own lifestyle so as to harm no other life forms? Have they stopped having children so we no longer need to destroy forests to make houses or toilet paper? Hmm?

Good luck getting people to blame themselves when they can blame cats instead.

Cats kill birds, well... deal with it.

As a note, concerned owners who want to reduce the likelihood of their cat killing birds could put a collar with a bell on their cat but these are not very effective as cats learn how to move without ringing the bell. Keeping the cat indoors is the best way to prevent it from killing songbirds, or by confining it a fully fenced cat section made out of chicken wire so birds do not get in. Cat owners should not entice birds into their yard with bird feeders.

Why are Dogs Neglected by Their Owners?

Recently I was awarded best answer for the question “Why do People Own Dogs but they Don't Take Care of Them?”. This not an easy question to answer because there are so many reasons why dogs are neglected, and some people do not even realize that they are not taking proper care of their pet.

Many people get dogs without realizing how much work they really are. They see a cute pup, and think it would be rather fun to have a dog, but before too long that pup is huge, and tearing their house apart, and is tossed out to live in the backyard where it digs and barks.

A lot of neglected dog problems start when a parent has given in to their child's begging for a dog.  When the child becomes tired of the dog, or out grow the novelty of owning a dog, the parents may not be willing to pick up the slack. This is something that always troubles me since the adults should have been aware that this does happen and should not have taken on getting a pet they were not willing to help care for. It's pretty much common knowledge that kids really cannot make lifetime commitments to pets.

Eager prospective dog owners often do not do proper breed research when they get a dog, they fail to recognize that different dogs have different lifestyle needs; while one breed of dog is fine at home on the sofa, others need a ton of exercise or mental stimulation to keep them satisfied (and behaved). Some breeds of dog require daily hair brushing or their fur tangles and forms painful mats.

Some people overlook the costs and expenses of dog care. They cut corners. They fail to vaccinate their dog, don't spay or neuter it, do not take it to obedience lessons, and neglect worming and flea control. The dog ends up riddled with parasites, becomes unruly, or starts urinating in the house so the people kick it outside. Again this is failure to plan for the pet.

Overall I do not think that anyone gets a dog with the intent of neglecting it. They simply were over eager and failed to do their homework before getting the dog.

 

If you are thinking of getting a dog or puppy, you need to:

• Do Breed Research
• Calculate the Yearly Cost of a Dog
• Decide if you have Enough Time for a Dog

If you took on the responsibility of dog ownership you are responsible for training the dog, feeding the dog, making sure the dog is well groomed, and overseeing the mental happiness of the dog. You are responsible for the veterinary needs of the dog for its entire lifetime, so, well... deal with it.

Welcome to Life, Deal With It

Life is not fair, life is not perfect, you do not always get what you deserve.  Problems happen.  It sucks, deal with it. 

I started this blog because I constantly battle people who live in self pity land, beating themself  up for this or that.  Somethings they have control over, somethings they don't. I see people angry at others for things that are their own fault.  An example of this is the person who let's their kitten out of the house and then gets mad at the guy who ran it over. 

I don't like being a person who sugar coats stuff, oh ya, I have sympathy, but sometimes people need to hear it like it is, like the person whose dog was destroying their house, its owner error nearly every time!

If you like honesty, then you might like this blog, I shoot from the hip, and you might think I am way off, but oh well, that's just how I see it.  It's the real world, with one life, people need to hear real words and not just brown nose butt kissing crap.  I will mostly deal with the realities of pet ownership.

If you want your butt kissed, or ego stroked, get a dog but if you complain about the dog, I will let you have it!  Life is too short to waste sugar coating things and telling people "everything will be alright".  Suck it up buttercup, welcome to life, if it's not what you thought it would be, well, deal with it.