Post by Dabeagle on Jan 5, 2017 17:10:56 GMT -5
I don't really like to say I own a pet. I know, legally, you do but in practice we don't really own living creatures. We can train them, but they still have their own wants, needs and perspective. In my family, as you probably have guessed, we're dog people. Not that I mind cats, but to me dogs get the whole buddy thing way more than cats do. Dogs, being pack creatures, see you as their pack, their family, and they treat you accordingly. A friend once said to me, and I paraphrase due to my memory, 'what bothers me about dogs is they gave up their freedom for a warm fire'. The idea always rubbed me the wrong way. Were canines ever going to rule the world? The poor things that are still wild have to have special protections because they do what predators do.
By and large the human race is pretty arrogant when it comes to animals. The pretty ones, like horses, can get care. The less pretty ones, like cows, are regularly consumed. Animals seem to have value to humanity only if they serve some purpose to us as a whole; usually food. They are rarely just recognized as another living being that can feel pain, have emotions and respond with love and loyalty.
Eleven years ago in spring I took a promotion to Marketing Rep, leaving the field service department behind. The Monday I started was the night Tristan, my beagle, had died. He'd been plagued with seizures since he was a puppy, a symptom of overbreeding in the age of puppy mills and people who make too much money from them to stop their torture of other living creatures. He died in my arms in the living room of heart failure, I think. That December my husband and I were waiting for our Chinese food to be prepared and we walked along the strip mall, just killing time. We walked into a pet store and spotted this little dog, shivering on newspaper over bare concrete - not even a towel or blanket. He was six months old, so we knew they weren't going to keep him much longer. So, for the last 250 in my checking account, we took him home.
Italian Grayhounds are an interesting breed, a toy breed. They are often mistaken for Whippets, and of course we thought ours was the best looking of them all. He was sort of regal when he sat, with his long nose and graceful build - a lean build meant for running at speed. When he was just a month or two with us, he caught a squirrel. I felt terrible for the squirrel and at the same time was kind of amazed he'd actually caught one. He once burrowed under our fence to go into the neighbors yard and steal their dogs squeaky toy, a gray squirrel.
I think of all these things as we sit and wait for the vet to call. He has s tumor on the side of his head. If it's malignant then all we can do is make him comfortable until he isn't anymore. If it's benign then we have to get an MRI and find someone who can actually do the surgery - we hope the surgeon that works with our vet can do it, but if not there is a specialist about 30 minutes away and if not there is Cornell. My vet said the recovery after such a surgery would be tough and that the tumor would likely grow back at some point because the likelihood of getting it all was effectively zero. But if I can give him a few more years, then we're going to try.
First thing, though, is we need that phone call to tell us it's benign.
By and large the human race is pretty arrogant when it comes to animals. The pretty ones, like horses, can get care. The less pretty ones, like cows, are regularly consumed. Animals seem to have value to humanity only if they serve some purpose to us as a whole; usually food. They are rarely just recognized as another living being that can feel pain, have emotions and respond with love and loyalty.
Eleven years ago in spring I took a promotion to Marketing Rep, leaving the field service department behind. The Monday I started was the night Tristan, my beagle, had died. He'd been plagued with seizures since he was a puppy, a symptom of overbreeding in the age of puppy mills and people who make too much money from them to stop their torture of other living creatures. He died in my arms in the living room of heart failure, I think. That December my husband and I were waiting for our Chinese food to be prepared and we walked along the strip mall, just killing time. We walked into a pet store and spotted this little dog, shivering on newspaper over bare concrete - not even a towel or blanket. He was six months old, so we knew they weren't going to keep him much longer. So, for the last 250 in my checking account, we took him home.
Italian Grayhounds are an interesting breed, a toy breed. They are often mistaken for Whippets, and of course we thought ours was the best looking of them all. He was sort of regal when he sat, with his long nose and graceful build - a lean build meant for running at speed. When he was just a month or two with us, he caught a squirrel. I felt terrible for the squirrel and at the same time was kind of amazed he'd actually caught one. He once burrowed under our fence to go into the neighbors yard and steal their dogs squeaky toy, a gray squirrel.
I think of all these things as we sit and wait for the vet to call. He has s tumor on the side of his head. If it's malignant then all we can do is make him comfortable until he isn't anymore. If it's benign then we have to get an MRI and find someone who can actually do the surgery - we hope the surgeon that works with our vet can do it, but if not there is a specialist about 30 minutes away and if not there is Cornell. My vet said the recovery after such a surgery would be tough and that the tumor would likely grow back at some point because the likelihood of getting it all was effectively zero. But if I can give him a few more years, then we're going to try.
First thing, though, is we need that phone call to tell us it's benign.
