For the love of all things sacred please stop saying PET PARENT, FUR BABY and other terms that take away your ownership of your animals! You are NOT their GUARDIAN you are their OWNER! You are not ADOPTING you are BUYING your pets! I don’t care if you get them from a shelter you are still BUYING them! I don’t adopt puppies, I sell them. I don’t PLACE dogs, I either give them away or I sell them. Either way the same scrutiny of interviewing is followed as if I were selling a puppy.
Slight tangent on this topic – please indulge my wandering mind this morning – I am tired due to long nights with newborn puppies . . .
I re-home dogs who come into breed ‘rescue’ but we aren’t truly rescuing them – we are re-homing them. Some get re-homed because some breeders have failed to educate buyers and this isn’t the best breed for them. Others get re-homes due to owners passing away or becoming too ill to take care of them. Some get re-homed due to poor training and therefore the dog doesn’t understand how to live peacefully. Some get re-homed due to poor breeding practices producing difficult temperaments. Others get re-homed due to illnesses their owners cannot afford to care for. Many reasons Staffords come into ‘rescue’ but none of them are truly rescued. We aren’t jumping into raging rivers or burning buildings to pull them to safety. I mean, if that’s what you did then by all means you did rescue a dog. And stop with the argument of ‘rescuing from meat farms and puppy mills’ because bullshit. Meat farms, true places raising animals to feed humans, do not breed purebred dogs. All those Goldens we saw on the news that we were told came from meat farms – they were either stolen or purchased from breeders and then sold the gullible American market. It’s also no secret the Amish breed dogs to sell – they breed whatever is popular at the time. You aren’t rescuing them from them either – you re making room for more livestock (puppies). Stop the demand and you stop the supply. Simple AF.
Did you also know that some ‘rescues’ breed dogs to sell as rescues? Yep. True. Did you know there are a couple huge purebred dog auctions in this country? Some less than honest ‘rescues” and some shelters go to these auctions to purchase dogs to ‘adopt’ to you, the gullible public. Again, stop the demand and the supply will dwindle.
Now, back to the topic – Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. Such as your PETS that you OWN.
When you anthropomorphize you give strength to the nutty Animal Rights folks who want to take away all of your rights to own pets or raise livestock. I’ve blogged on that topic before – the difference in Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. Know the difference. Stop supporting and giving energy to the extremists.