Our culture has, for better or worse, become obsessed with our pets.\u00a0 There are many women who seem to have replaced children with dogs and cats as a way to assuage their maternal instinct.\u00a0 And even many families that have children spend a very sizable chunk of their time and money owning and\/or fostering dogs and cats.\u00a0 It seems as if it is a growth industry too.\u00a0 From what I understand people are breeding mutts just to provide fodder for the foster dog market and you have to admit that\u2019s sort of madness.\u00a0 After all the aim of fostering all these dogs is to eliminate the surplus dog problem.\u00a0 If you\u2019re breeding dogs specifically for this group of people to adopt then you\u2019ve ensured that there will never be an end to the problem.\u00a0 Neat trick!<\/p>\n
I will be the first to admit that dogs are a remarkable part of life.\u00a0 A good family dog is a part of the family and can also provide benefits.\u00a0 Their talents as burglar alarm and deterrent are undeniable.\u00a0 In the rural area their scent around the property deters some dangerous creatures.\u00a0 But it is primarily their companionship that makes them unique.\u00a0 A dog that you\u2019ve raised from a puppy truly does assume that you are his parent and takes your family as his.\u00a0 There is an amazing bond there.\u00a0 And it goes both ways.\u00a0 The death of a dog creates a remarkably strong feeling of bereavement.\u00a0 If you are present at the death, such as when a veterinarian administers a lethal injection, the actual moment of death is a shock to you, especially the first time you experience it.\u00a0 I guess it has something to do with the child\/parent nature of the relationship between a dog and its owner.\u00a0 It is the responsibility we feel for these creatures that depend on us to make sense of the human world they live in.<\/p>\n
This came up today because Camera Girl has a menagerie of pets that she shares with our two-year-old granddaughter when she visits us.\u00a0 So, the two dogs and the parakeets and finches and the fish and the hermit crab and the rabbit and the guinea pig and the hamster each has its place in the affections of this little girl and if one of them dies it will be necessary for us to explain and sympathize with her feelings about the loss.\u00a0 And of course, as grandparents we have to clear all this information with the parents to make sure we respect their wishes on how death is explained to a little child.<\/p>\n
Well, yesterday the five-year-old guinea pig, \u201cBaby\u201d died.\u00a0 So, this morning I went out to the pet cemetery that I maintain and found a spot for Baby and dug the grave.\u00a0 And this is a bit of work even for a small animal like a guinea pig because the ground out there is more rocks than soil.\u00a0 But all was prepared and services were read and flowers were placed on the grave and all the solemnities were observed.\u00a0 After all Camera Girl is a very warm hearted pet owner.<\/p>\n
When the little girl comes back next week, we\u2019ll tell her, as requested by her parents, that Baby went back to live with her mother who needed her.\u00a0 And hopefully she will transfer her displaced affections to Petey the rabbit and Jelly Bean the hamster without too much sadness.\u00a0 Knowing Camera Girl, I am sure that additional living creatures will be added to the zoo to bolster our head count.\u00a0 We have standards to maintain.<\/p>\n
Eventually that little girl will learn about death and it will probably be because her own dog will die.\u00a0 Hopefully that will be when she\u2019s already eight or ten years old and can somewhat understand the concept of death.\u00a0 And probably either before or after that loss her parents will have added another dog to the house to continue that role in her life.<\/p>\n
But the point of this whole essay is that Americans are transferring their affection and time to their pets because we have become almost completely isolated from each other.\u00a0 And not just because of the pandemic although that is the ultra-example of the problem.\u00a0 We don\u2019t get together as communities, we don\u2019t know our neighbors and we even lose touch with our family.\u00a0 We\u2019re isolated within the boxes we live in and now most of the younger people don\u2019t even talk to each other at home.\u00a0 They sit with their faces buried in their phones and text.\u00a0 Walking their dogs may be the only thing that drags them out of their houses and maybe their only interactions with strangers is at the dog park.<\/p>\n
So pets may be the clearest indication that we\u2019ve become alienated from humanity at almost every level.\u00a0 If these people didn\u2019t get to pet their dog or cat at night as they wait to fall asleep they might be almost completely isolated from another living thing.<\/p>\n
Strange world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our culture has, for better or worse, become obsessed with our pets.\u00a0 There are many women who seem to have replaced children with dogs and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1263],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous"],"yoast_head":"\n