Pet Advice
- At January 14, 2007
- By Bob Howe
- In Blog Posts
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We shouldn’t fool ourselves into mistaking the world as we experience it for the world as it really is.
The two are related, but the relationship is complicated, and it’s real work to figure it out.
@Popehat We're never going to change their hearts and minds if we treat this kind of conduct as a bad thing.
Oscar Hokeah's blog post: Debut Novel: CALLING FOR A BLANKET DANCE https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/21549394-debut-novel-calling-for-a-blanket-dance via @goodreads
“the…novelist, who seeks to confer or receive amusement from his labours, may, without presumption, apply to prose fiction a licence, or rather a rule, from the adoption of which so many exquisite combinations of human feeling have resulted in the highest specimens of poetry.”
Jeff Bezos being lionized by rote, thoughtless coverage for going to space privately, decades after we did it first collectively, speaks of the ethos of an age: we've come to venerate what we do alone and sneer at what we do together.
Let's reverse that.
https://the.ink/p/what-we-do-alone-and-what-we-do-together
eleanor
Morgan has seen that video of dogs talking, and she’s practicing. She knows that if only she can master the talking thing, all the pizza she wants will be hers.
ashbet
This is frickin’ ridiculous . . . feed them a healthy diet and EXERCISE them, and they won’t be overweight. Gahhhh . . . what this is is really an excuse for owners to get out of walking the damn dog often enough. I hate the idea of people medicating their pets to get out of the responsibility of taking good care of them :/
— A <3
admin
Interesting theory, and true as far as it goes, I think. I’m not sure the leader/follower dichotomy is absolute: at work I have to take orders, to a dog I’m god. (I think that feeding pets so they’ll love you is akin to overpermissive parenting, by the way.) I’ve also known some supposed alphas who were very good at training pets, but who were rigid, insecure human beings who collapsed in the face of confrontation.
admin
I’m more alarmed by the kitty porn stashed under the couch.
admin
Amen! As I said above, I think there’s a lot going on with such people, beyond responsibility. And there’s also a cultural bias against looking too closely at the psychological issues that underlie such behaviors. Have trouble in bed? Don’t dare think too hard about what’s going on emotionally for you: take a drug for erectile dysfunction that’ll get you hard no matter what you feel.
eleanor
Should I worry, or do you suppose that this is a normal outlet for all species concerned?
admin
Well, I’ll tell you, we’re not going to spank her.
keikaimalu
Good points. I do think some people are good at both leading and following — myself, for example. I make a good lieutenant. And I completely agree that indulging a creature dependent on you to gain their affection is the same whether the dependent is pet or child. Plus it gives the dependent an impossible job to do, which is highly unfair.
And of course people’s histories and baggage can play into how they lead and/or follow, and how they deal with confrontation. I’ve just noticed that some people always shy away from laying down the law, and others always chafe when others try to lead them. But of course it’s more complex than that.