If I see any more comments on Mumsnet of it's just a dog

[Lifeneedsaresetagain]

Do people not realise that for those who welcome them into the family they are part of the family. And if you have a dog and say it's just a dog, I'm not sure you should have one.

The key word there is “owner”.

That’s a very balanced view but OP doesn’t seem to be respecting the feelings of other people.

No they aren’t however she does come to dog friendly cafes. run errands( PO loves her and has a treat jar), likes to sit next to my husbands office desk while he works from home and will be travelling across Europe with us. She has an amazing dog life- 2 walks in her favourite fields and woods a day, her family/ pack around all the time, good food, lots of love and occasional brief forays into the human world which she loves and where she would rather be than left howling at home alone.

But, take that approach and Mumsnet wouldn't exist.

Love can be unconditional and deeply felt, whether it's a dog or a child.

We don't have to love people's annoying undisciplined children any more than we have to love annoying undisciplined dogs.

The poster feels her dog is irreplaceable, and she's right. That particular dog cannot be replaced with a different dog, just like your granny isn't replaced when a new baby is born.

And she's every right to feel upset about something she loves dying. She can't be wrong about her own feelings. You feel how you feel - it's not up to another person to judge how strongly someone else feels about something as right or wrong.

No we don't have to love other people's things. We just need to be more accepting and respectful of other people's feelings annoying children and dogs.

You can just respect that one person loves one thing and another loves another and there's no reason you have to understand why the other person loves something different to you. You can just be respectful of someone as being different to you without judging whether or not you feel that's legitimate.

*feelings about their own annoying children and dogs

it's unreasonable to expect other people to regard your dog as having family member status and rights.

This. It is your choice to welcome your dog into your family and it is entirely up to you how you regard the dog in your family home.

But you can't expect other people to treat your dog as a human in terms of whether the dog is included in family invitations. You can't make other welcome your dog into their home, or business just because YOU regard the dog as a family member.

It doesn't make my son any less scared of dogs when someone says it. Owners should have dogs on leads anyway so they aren't approaching children and potentially scaring them.

Especially the jumpy ones who are clearly very poorly trained.

And parents should have their children under control ie not on scooters or bikes on pavements or footpaths other people are walking on, not making unbearable noise in cafes or restaurants, not roaming round said cafes or restaurants…..

I think they are very much on par with the humans in my family, it's how I was raised

That is lovely for you but its important you recognise thats specific to your family/home, rather than a universal societal norm. Lots of families are like yours, of course. But equally many regard the dog as loved family members while not on par with the humans, & many non dog owners will regard pets as far less significant.

All of those views are normal and acceptable.

I love dogs and my dog (who died a couple of months ago) was definitely a very important part of the family. I still don't think you get to police who can and can't make comments about dogs and dog ownership. People are allowed to comment on things even if they don't have direct experience of them. Sometimes you might be offended by their comments. And? Since when did anyone have the right never to encounter views they disagree with or are offended by?

parents should have their children under control ie not on scooters or bikes on pavements or footpaths other people are walking on, not making unbearable noise in cafes or restaurants, not roaming round said cafes or restaurants…..

Parents do need to have their children under control but why on earth doesn't a child have the right to carefully ride a scooter in a footpath any more than someone else walk on it?

The key difference with people who whinge about out of control children vs dogs, is that the law will very firmly protect the child as having an unquestionable set of rights. No matter how much your dog is loved it will have far far fewer.

If a badly behaved child pokes your dog and riles it up, and your dog badly bites the child in response, your dog will likely be put down or be wearing a muzzle in public. Because the law places considerably higher value on the child, and rightly so.

Dogs aren't children.

I have a dog.

There has never been a time in my life since I was born that there hasn’t been a dog (or two) in my life.

I love and care for them.

But they are not my family. They are a pet. I don’t expect everyone to like them, I don’t inflict them on others. If people come round, unless they want the dog around, I keep her away contained in another room. I would never take a dog to someone else’s home.

Mine is a fucking liability to be fair, but even if she was perfectly behaved, I wouldn’t take her into shops and cafes, that’s just madness, why would I do that? She’s happier snoozing on the sofa at home while I do those things

I don’t presume that everyone thinks my children are great, same with the dog.

I don’t take my dogs to peoples houses, or into shops.
We do doggy things together- lovely long walks etc, but I realise not everyone wants dogs in their houses and I wouldn’t dream of turning up with my dogs at someone’s home.
I wish people did the same with their kids tbh 😂

I love animals and I understand and agree with your point about human capacity for unspeakable cruelty and violence—but equality does not, and cannot, come into it when you are talking about domesticated animals. When would it be considered acceptable (outside of a certain type of fetish) to put a collar and lead on another human being to keep them under control? Or lock them in a cage(outside of a prison)? Or keep them penned in a certain area and not let them out? Or force them to have sex in order to produce certain desirable characteristics? Or own them?
Equality is not a thing a domesticated animal can ever hope for.

Children cycling up ahead or racing up ahead on scooters and bikes are dangerous. Parents rarely have children under control or understanding the needs of others these days. Foot paths are for feet not vehicles and particularly not impulsive children with limited awareness of danger. Walkers of all ages use footpaths, pram users and the elderly. It’s not always easy to dodge an out of control child on a bike or scooter. If a footpath or pavement is next to a road it’s even more dangerous for pedestrians .

I don't understand how dogs (animals) have been elevated to human by some people yet they'll still eat cows, pigs etc which have the same level of cognitive function.
I get that people love their pets and to them, they are part of the family and that's fine, but human they are not.

I'm not following your logic.

If family love is loyalty, protection and affection, and dogs show loyalty, protection and affection to their pack… that’s basically the same thing. You’re describing the same behaviour but calling one ‘love’ and the other ‘not love.’

I think animals are absoloutely capable of love. How I square this with being an omnivore I don't know though....that's a whole other thread and something I struggle to reconcile!

Fair point. They're not very pleasant posts from the OP.

But if this forum was a little less mean, then it would be possible to take a step back and see OP's feeling really got at by the comments on the other post about putting a dog in kennels at Christmas. That's where all this comes from. Half those comments don't provide any useful content, they're just people saying - you're stupid for caring about something I don't agree with as important. That is going to upset people who feel that thing which is so important to them is being belittled. It's just driving more nastiness.

And it's so unnecessary - you don't have to understand why something is of value to someone else, you just have to respect that it is.

People are often really defensive when upset. But somewhere along the way people could start trying to just be respectful of other people's feelings being legitimate to them.

If we tried to genuinely understand why someone was feeling the way instead of snapping to judge and criticise them, this forum could be of so much more value.

When Brexit happened, there was a whole bunch of research into how you convince someone to believe facts which are true, or move two people from their opposing stubborn standpoint towards each other to get a resolution. None of it said - by challenging the opposing view with an irrefutable argument worked. It showed you needed to actively try to understand the opposing view yourself without trying to correct it to your existing view. Essentially it said you needed to be curious and open. So none of this commenting that the other person is just wrong is constructive.

But people like the bitchy comments. They like having a place to indulge their mean inner voices that they know they can't say out loud in their day to day lives. It drives traffic and ads and makes some shareholders somewhere along the way a lot of money.

Everyone cares about something. I just don't think we should belittle the thing someone else cares about.

I'm sounding pretty judgy and holier than thou myself there, I don't mean to. I'm sure I've said a bunch of mean things to other people at some point too, we all do it. It's just not nice when 1000 people do it at once.

Sorry, got a bit side ranty there.

Depends on the human.

Love that people love their dogs. But it’s YOUR dog. Not mine. If you bring your dog into my house I will notice the smell, the drooling, the shedding of hair. I will sneeze, wheeze and possibly need medical attention. Your dog might get excited and start jumping on my small children.

end of

There seem to be a few entitled dog owner posts this morning. Love that you love your dog but don’t be that blinkered owner who expects everyone else to feel the same way

I am LIVID with my family for excluding my fur baby from invitations to

• my niece’s christening
• the theatre
• Lanzarote
• my brother’s wedding
• my nephew’s violin concert
• Pizza Express
• my niece’s chocolate-decorating birthday party at the local independent chocolate shop

I’ve gone NC with them because my fur baby will be by my side for the rest of my life (or at least the next 5 years).