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Why don’t (most) frum people have dogs/pets?
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amother
Pumpkin


 

Post Wed, Feb 14 2018, 5:04 pm
Ha fox, your post is great! Did u ever read the children's books about Carl, the rottie who babysits?
My kids desperately want a dog, and we almost got a puppy. But we decided against it for the simple reason that I have a very severe chronic illness. There are days I can't take care of my own basic needs, never mind my poor children. There's no way I can care for a pet too.
It wouldn't be fair nor healthy for the animal, and dh does more than enough as it is.
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FranticFrummie




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Feb 14 2018, 5:08 pm
amother wrote:
Ha fox, your post is great! Did u ever read the children's books about Carl, the rottie who babysits?
My kids desperately want a dog, and we almost got a puppy. But we decided against it for the simple reason that I have a very severe chronic illness. There are days I can't take care of my own basic needs, never mind my poor children. There's no way I can care for a pet too.
It wouldn't be fair nor healthy for the animal, and dh does more than enough as it is.


I have the Carl books! The toddler looks exactly like DD did at that age, so that made it even more fun.

I used to breed and show champion Australian Shepherds (before DD was born, and I had more time.) I always used a junior handler for my dogs. This young man was excellent in the ring, and knew how to get my dogs to look just right. He won lots of blue ribbons for me.

I miss having Aussies, but I'm too ill these days for an active working breed. I have a very tiny, very elderly chihuahua who keeps me company.
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amother
Wine


 

Post Wed, Feb 14 2018, 6:53 pm
shabbatiscoming wrote:
Wow, talk about nasty.
Why do we have a dog? Because hashem only blessed us with one child. That child was and still is very lonely. We heard that a pet would be wonderful for the child. And so we go to a dog, a non slobbery dog, thank you very much. This dog has brought unbelievable amounts of joy to our child and to our home. My child loves our dog so unconditionally, its been a wonderful addition to our family.
And there are so many benefits that we get from having this lovely dog: we get to take walks together, exercise, my child has learned responsibilities that otherwise would not have been learned.
Please dont say such terrible things, it does not become anyone.
And dont use amother to do it.


Same here. We were blessed with one adorable child and I got the dog when DC got older and starting asking about siblings. DC calls the dog a brother sometimes and absolutely adores him. I didn’t grow up in a family with pets and didn’t picture my life with one at all. But now that we have a dog, I can’t imagine life without one.
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Fox




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Feb 14 2018, 7:16 pm
amother wrote:
Did u ever read the children's books about Carl, the rottie who babysits?

Somehow I missed Carl! Rottweilers would make good babysitters, but the gold standard for babysitting is Bull Terriers (often known as pit bulls). In fact, they used to be called "nanny dogs" because you could let your kids play outside or away from your sight with the dog in charge, basically. The dog would physically drag the kid away from anything dangerous or prohibited, and he/she would fetch the parent if needed. I can't speak for anyone else, but I've had babysitters and mother's helpers who didn't seem to have that much seichel!

Just imagine the conversations we'd have here. Instead of fretting over how much to pay babysitters and whether to dock their pay for showing up late, we'd have questions like, "My dog does such a great job watching my kids. I was thinking of getting him a special reward. Who sells custom doggie treats? Or would a new chew toy be better?"

And all the naked kid threads? You could train your pooch to start yapping up a storm when toddlers start to disrobe!

I've forgotten the particular breed, but the announcer said that two of the dogs can herd 1000 sheep. I figured that would have been about right for my five kids!

Or how about a Bedlington Terrier, which looks even more like a mutant lamb in motion than sitting still. That would attract the neighbors' attention.

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thunderstorm




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Feb 14 2018, 7:23 pm
Chayalle wrote:
We have a pet guinea pig. My girls love him, and so do all the other kids in the neighborhood. When we moved, my daughter made friends so quickly, by inviting them in to see her pet.

To be perfectly honest, though - it's messy. But we now keep him downstairs and DD cleans his cage and takes care of him. If I had to, that would be the end of the pet - I have enough to do keeping house.

I went through the fiasco of having a guinea pig . My DS doesn't forgive me for giving it away but I couldn't take the constant maintenance and stench. I am super sensitive to smells and I just couldn't handle it. We lived in smaller quarters then, but I'm not willing to take him back.
I've got two roosters that wake me up at 5:00 every morning and it's starting to get to me too.
I married into an animal lovin family and my Kids all were gifted with that gene... not easy .
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Water Stones




 
 
    
 

Post Wed, Feb 14 2018, 7:28 pm
amother wrote:
Cause I just dont like them. simple. I cant imagine why anyone would want one.


A dog is love wrapped in fur.
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imasoftov




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Feb 15 2018, 2:19 pm
amother wrote:
This is supposed to be a forum for goodwill and friendship among fellow Frum

women.

If you feel some people do not live up to it, you could show the way.

"The more I know about people, the better I like dogs" - someone who may not have been either Mark Twain. Madame de Sévigné, Madame Roland, Alphonse de Lamartine, Alphonse Toussenel, Louise de la Rameé, Alfred D’Orsay, or Thomas Carlyle.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/.....dogs/
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bigsis144




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Feb 15 2018, 2:52 pm
I agree with those who have asked “what’s with the assumption that having a dog/pet is the default, ideal state?”

If I wasn’t frum, would anyone care about my personal choice to have or not have a pet? Or is linking it to religiosity a way of further proving how ignorant/fearful/babymaking-obsessed/poor frum families are?
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BrachaBatya




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Feb 15 2018, 3:26 pm
I can't imagine not having pets. That is a sad life to me.
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amother
Seafoam


 

Post Thu, Feb 15 2018, 4:07 pm
BrachaBatya wrote:
I can't imagine not having pets. That is a sad life to me.


Me neither. She makes our home and family so much happier.
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Fox




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Feb 15 2018, 4:19 pm
The frum pet owners I know, down to the last one, do not carry their love for their pets to an extreme. They recognize the difference between humans and animals. However, I thought these observations from Matt Walsh in the Daily Wire were worth posting. There 's good mussar aside from the pets versus no pets question.

Your Pet is Not a Person

Quote:
Years from now, historians will look at our culture's devolution into pet worship and write many volumes attempting to diagnose it. But I think the cause is quite clear, and has already been mentioned above: selfishness. To love another human being is to sacrifice. It is to come out of yourself and put someone else's needs above your own. To love a child or a spouse is to serve, to give. Modern man is not willing or able to forget himself or put anyone higher than himself, so he targets his affections toward his gerbil or his poodle instead. That way he can feel like he's "loving" something without actually having to do anything or change his life in any significant way.

But it's not really love. Yes, some people do love their pets, and love them in a healthy way, by loving them in accordance with the natural order of things. But people who love their pets more than they love people don't actually love pets at all. They don't love anything. More precisely, what they love about the pet is what it does for them and how it makes them feel. They love themselves through their pets. The animal is a blank slate that the loveless modern man can turn into a little avatar of himself. He worships his dog because his dog worships him.

People are more complicated. They will not lie at your feet. They will not slobber over you. They will not sit there to be rubbed or cuddled as long as you wish. They are not accessories that you can carry around for "emotional support." Their needs are more complex. It is work to love them, and it involves an emotional risk. This is all too much for a selfish person so he retreats to the lesser, simpler, self-centered "love" of his cat or his parrot. And, as I've found, he's often pretty straightforward about his selfish motivations.

A few weeks ago, I tweeted a simple observation noting how we tend to "idolize and humanize" our pets, which, I said then and say now, is a sign of the moral and intellectual decline of western civilization. Thousands of enraged people responded, incensed at the very notion that there could be anything at all wrong with humanizing something that is not human. Many of them justified their idol worship by explaining that a dog has never lied to them, cheated them, stolen from them, or stabbed them in the back. They surmise that dogs must be "better than people" because they have never been personally inconvenienced by a dog.

Of course, a tree or a rock or an orange has never lied to anyone, either. A paper towel has never cut me off in traffic. A pair of shoes has never taken too long ordering food in the drive thru while I'm starving to death a few cars behind. A box of crayons has never texted in a movie theater. A dandelion has never deleted the show I had saved on the DVR. Plants, animals, and inanimate objects have never committed any evil acts at all, because they are not capable of committing evil acts. It is not a mushroom's superior virtue that prevents it from becoming a terrorist; it is the fact that it's a mushroom. Your dog cannot hurt you like your brother can hurt you, because he is a dog. It's not that he's making better moral choices than the humans in your life, it's that he's not making any moral choices at all.

There is another side to this coin. Animals are not capable of evil but neither are they capable of virtue. They cannot be cowardly but neither can they be courageous. They cannot tell you a lie but neither can they tell you the truth. They cannot stab you in the back but neither can they empathize with you. They cannot build bombs but neither can they build cities. It is a real shame that so many people prefer a creature that lacks the capacity for evil over a creature who has the capacity for goodness.

It is pure unadulterated narcissism that leads a man in this direction. He is rejecting the entire human race because the human race requires too much of him. It is not subservient enough. It will not lie down and lick his palms, so he dismisses it outright. And here is the most tragic thing of all: while he protects himself from greater pains by idolizing a lesser being, he has excluded himself from the greater joy that comes from loving a greater being. I'm afraid that one day, when he's dying alone with only his mutt to mourn him, he'll regret that choice.
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