But each individual poster needs the advice. No point getting annoyed and aggressive at them for asking for help just because several other people have asked for the same help in the future.
LochJess, absolutely. Get snarky with someone wandering onto the board who isn't sure how to housetrain, and has been doing what their book says (or what they think their book says) and it doesn't seem to be working, and they'll go away feeling even worse than they felt before and probably never ask for advice or support here again. There's quite often a to-and-fro on here of:
OP: 'I didn't know that.'
Posters: 'Well, you should have known that, everyone who has a dog knows that, you should have looked it up, you have no business getting a dog if you don't know that.'
Not helpful, especially when you can just say, 'Well, we live and learn - and Google can be a great resource when you have a dog!' We've ALL made poor decisions in the past - I know I have, including about my dogs. It doesn't hurt to remember that.
The issues around puppies that I generally see tend to be started by people getting defensive over the 'research' they've done rather than accepting some hard truths
Yes, totally. But the 'issues' go beyond getting a puppy.
If you feel defensive over giving that information then you're clearly uncomfortable on some level with your own decision-making.
Or maybe just sick of going over the same ground over and over again? You can be very comfortable with a choice you've made, but have no desire to keep on cut'n'pasting the reasons you made it.
This thread itself is pretty unpleasant and juvenile - it's intended to do nothing but cause a bunfight, and attempt to bully regular posters
Or perhaps the poster was thoroughly fed up and wanted to spark a discussion that would encourage some posters to reflect on how they come across?
beyond the issue of there being not enough good homes for all of the pet dogs being bred
The oversupply in the British dog population would be 100% sorted if the puppy farms were closed down and imports from puppy farms abroad came to a halt. It would be more than sorted: there would be a puppy shortage. Which might, given how some people treat their dogs, be a good thing.
As BiteyShark said way upthread, we all want to do the right thing. As many posters have said, we want the best for the dogs. But I have spells of coming off MN completely, and the last one was sparked by this board.