I know of way too many people that give up animals/snakes/etc when they are no longer cute or puppies. They end up going on and living their lives while their animals are put in the earthly version of purgatory to feel abandoned, hopeless, lonely, depressed. Then these people go out and buy more puppies, kittens, etc. This should be a crime.
Edit: before it gets crazy. This is towards people who think it’s cute to buy little animals then when it no longer suits their image of self, discards them. I’m talking about the narcissists, the trend-chasers, and those obsessed with projecting a perfect persona who see animals as accessories to boost their ego.
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I don’t think this is unpopular at all.
I certainly have sympathy for those who faced a horrible situation and can no longer care for their pets and have to give them up.
But I absolutely agree—I have also seen puppies and kittens and other pets be given to someone as a birthday or Christmas gift, only for the animal to be severely neglected because they only kept the kitten or puppy in a pet play pen or a cage or carrier. At that point, they should get a stuffed animal and look at cute animals on the internet—they clearly can’t handle the responsibility and don’t have the compassion to care for an animal.
I think you have a good idea actually. I don’t think it should be unpopular.
You’re barking up the wrong tree here, OP.
I pretty much agree actually 💀 I have an ex who impulsively adopted like 4 different cats and only kept 1 of them (to my knowledge) over the course of like less than a year. From the same place?? I think eventually they told him he was not allowed to adopt from there anymore but I have no idea why he did this. He would just impulsively do it and then give them back up after a month. He definitely treated those animals like objects/toys not living things, and it was disgusting
“People should be on a tracking list…” End the post right there. Last thing we need is to grow America’s mass surveillance problem.
I think it depends on the situation. My parents gave up one of their dogs and subsequently have adopted more. In their defence, the dog bit my brother who was a toddler at the same.
I know people who have done the same thing – the dog bit the child and they felt the child wasn’t safe to be around the child
Should they be tracked? Yes. Criminally charged? No, unless they severely neglected or abused their animals.
Criminal charges are a bit far, but a good agency will want to know how many pets you’ve surrendered and why.
I feel like this would just lead to more pets being dumped/abandoned, or even potentially killed, instead of people trying to re-home or give them up to a shelter or maybe sanctuary for reptiles and such. And there wouldn’t be any realistic way to keep tabs on those who do just abandon their pets. Like yeah you could micro-chip your dogs and cats, but you couldn’t do that for reptiles
I do wish people would be more responsible and not view pets as objects or toys, but I don’t know how you could realistically enforce that
r/lostredditors
My ex gave my dog away after we split up and I couldn’t bring her with me and it kills me, I loved that dog and I usually try not to get attached to animals. I begged my new landlord to let me bring her to my new house but she was afraid she would chase the neighbor’s cows and she’s was probably right. The only thing that makes me feel better is hoping she went somewhere where she has room to roam around and be happy instead of being stuck in the house, we had a decent sized back yard she could play in but she was a blue heeler, and needed plenty of room, after I was forced to leave I was told she ran all up and down the hallway whining for me at night, I’m not an emotional person but if I ever saw her again I’d probably break down crying.
As someone who works in vet med and rescue, a better idea is to go after backyard breeders/puppy mills more aggressively than we do.
While my despair at people doing what you describe is great, your idea would be virtually impossible to implement for a variety of reasons.
A better strategy would be to emphasize population control at the source. Having an intact animal on purpose (for any length of time) should be harder. I personally think actually breeding and selling animals should require a permit. Because what you’re describing is a problem whether people get several puppies or not if those animals are still created. Rescues and shelters are full to bursting. And I’ve absolutely had my fill of people buying a $1,000 mutt with diseases and genetic defects and then not being able to afford the care. A client let her two intact dogs mate and have puppies even though they are brother and sister and were already inbred. The resulting puppies are tragic. One just has such a devastating heart defect that it probably won’t make it to a year old, even if it were to get a very expensive surgery. I don’t necessarily fault the poor idiots who bought this puppy, but I sure wish I could have a violent conversation with the “breeder” who told us that if she hadn’t found suckers to buy them, she would have “thrown them away”. -.-
On the topic of acquisition, I also think people should be more proactive about making contingency plans. A rescue I work with has so many dogs that came from an elderly person who passed or went into a nursing facility and the family cannot/will not care for it. Heartbreaking.
I also think we should try harder to keep animals with owners. Temporary foster for people trying to get their shit together. Changed policy allowing animals to be with their people in places like nursing homes/assisted living. We cannot all pay for care and food for other people’s animals all the time, but temporary help that keeps an animal with an owner is often a cheaper proposition than permanent removal, and an awful lot of very good owners have temporary situational difficulties with finances/housing/etc.
It is a complex problem, but reducing the number of unwanted animals will go a long way to improve the conditions for them all.
Source: many years of vet med and rescue
You should post this to r/rant or something because you make a good argument
There should just be regulation and licensing and it would solve 90% of pet problems
So the solution to cruelty is to make a 1984 system that tracks everything and causes more cruelty through fines and stuff I don’t know man this doesn’t sound like a winner
In many decades on earth, I have only known one person who surrendered their pet for this reason. This reads as you keeping shitty company.
I agree with you, though. If someone chronically does this, they should lose the opportunity to adopt.
How is this unpopular? Pretty much all pet owners and normal people in general agree that pets are not toys, they’re living beings that deserve to be treated with love. There should be a blacklist for people who abandoned/neglected or abused animals.
YES!!
I agree. No more adoptions.
People should drown their pets in the river, like the old days.
Ugh, there is a couple I used to work with who are so proud of what amazing parents they were. They did the classic get their toddler pet rabbits for Easter, then barely a couple months ago by and they’re already asking people to take the rabbits off their hands. Like, they’re stuffed animals or toys. Maybe don’t do the cliche of getting your small child rabbits for Easter.
I’ve blocked them on social media a while back because reading the stuff made my blood boil (it wasn’t just for this reason)…also, it’s not like me, as someone with no kids, giving them parental advice would have gone over well.
Think logically about how this would be implemented. If this was a rule, people would be much more reluctant to give up their pets or more likely to “lose” them or let them die. Do you really want that? Do you really want to give those kinds of people any incentive to keep that animal longer than they should? I wouldn’t, and it’s kind of fucked up that you want to force animals to stay with people that don’t want them.
You’re concerned for the well-being of animals? I hope you don’t eat meat.
I don’t know anybody who does that, let alone many people.
Do people lay in bed all night thinking up silly unpopular opinions?
My mom has a “friend” that does this and we find it so baffling. Probably 10 different dogs or cats over 15 or so years. “I got a puppy!” K, it’s around for a year give or take, then one day we visit and it’s just… not there anymore. What happens to it? Nobody knows. “Oh he ran away/got out” okay… A year later “I got a kitten!” Repeat story. It’s extremely bizarre and sad.