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How can they?

6K views 37 replies 30 participants last post by  Augustine 
#1 ·
I don't know if this is the right forum but I just saw an article about a family that had a german shepherd who was 17 years old and they gave it up to a shelter and then another article of a family giving a gsd up that protected their family from a bear. What is the matter with people? What is their mindset? Is it that they think of their pets as pieces of furniture? They probably abandon their parents in a nursing home and forgot them too. There was a case here in town at the local Human Society where the wife made them give up their GSD and the kids begged to go visit him. The poor thing was all excited thinking he was going home and they left again. The dog died 2 weeks later. Even the people who lived across the street moved and just left their cat. A guy out at work told me about his wife rescuing a purebred dog that was laying inside a house after the family moved out but before they left they cut the babies out of her so they could sell them and left her there to die. His wife rescued the poor dog and still has her. This country needs much stiffer penalties for animal abuse. I'd like to take people who abandon animals or people that give them up because they've become to much of a bother out into the middle of no where and leave THEM.:mad:
 
#32 ·
Oh OP, I'll give you a laugh. Many years ago, pre Archer, my husband and I decided to move from Ireland to Spain. Now at the time we had our old dog Opus, a basset hound, and three cats. People used to ask us ALL THE TIME 'what are you going to do with the animals when you go?' Like it never occurred to them that they were family and naturally would be coming with us, oh and coming back 5 years later. We thought that was really weird. And when Opus went blind at 14 some people thought we'd automatically get him euthanised(!) like, WHY would being blind bother an old basset? He spent most of his days, when not eating cheese, snoring in a patch of sunlight, or going for his walks around the block on, sniffing quite happily at his own pace - once he could feel the tension on his brace he was fine.
People, people are odd sometimes.
 
#33 ·
This kind of stuff enrages me. I would just as soon cut off my right arm as to have given up either one of my dogs. I know occasionally there are justifiable reasons, but even then, you do it the right way, not discard them like trash.

When my first dog, a yellow lab, was about 14, we had to have him put down. He was very old, and it was painful for him to move and he kept falling, etc. It broke my heart. I arranged for a vet to come to the house so he wouldn't be scared and he died in my arms. That's been over two years ago and I am crying right now thinking about it.

And I get impatient with people who say they can't deal with the end, either with animals or human beings. I have heard people say "Oh, I don't go to hospitals or nursing homes, I can't visit so and so, it's just too hard, I can't deal with it." And you know what my answer is? "You need to grow up! Do you think anybody likes it? Do you think it's easy for anybody? You do it because it's the right thing, not the easy thing."

Sorry about the rant, just infuriates me.
 
#34 ·
Some people infuriate me.

I was volunteering to do some data entry for our large shelter, and a lot of it was intake info. One of them was giving up a cat named Pickles (loved the name), reason was "about to have a baby." To me, does that mean you're going to give up the first baby if you have a 2nd??

I cant imagine ever giving up any of my animals. It was hard enough when my ex & I split to leave one of our 3 cats (he wanted to keep him, and we adopted him together - my ex actually picked him out). Its been over 3 years and I still miss him (the kitty!). The only reason I keep my ex on my FB is so that I can get updates on the cat, who just had to have his eyes removed due to inflammation - he'd been blind about a year now.
 
#35 ·
I don't understand how anyone could give up a family member, either. Our Roxy was returned to the shelter TWICE before we adopted her. I guess one of the families that took her had children, and when they realized that the children couldn't walk her by themselves, they brought her back. Like you couldn't have realized that a child couldn't walk a 65 lb. pit bull with no leash training BEFORE you took her home?

The family that lives next door to us used to have a lab. Well, when they started having kids, the walks went out the window. Then, the lab swallowed a pacifier and needed to have surgery to remove it. After that, they kept him in the basement all the time because they couldn't be bothered to keep the toys off the floor and couldn't keep an eye on him so he wouldn't swallow something else. About a year later, they had another kid and decided to get rid of the lab. To their credit (ugh, I hate that I'm defending them here), they found a nice family with another dog and lots of land that wanted him. At least he has a better life now. They now have three kids and I have to hear them talk about how they will most likely get another dog "when their kids are older." Makes my blood boil!
 
#38 ·
Sometimes I wish there were people that WOULD give up their pets.

My aunt and cousins owned two lovely Golden Retrievers (mother and son). They fed them most of the time, occasionally filled their water bowls and sometimes ran outside with them. But beyond that, they never really gave a hoot about them.

Bella, the mother, was starting to grow old at that point. She had these weird sores on her knees/joints which my cousin repeatedly pointed out to my Aunt. But do you think she ever took them to the vet? Nope. This was a rich, almost upper-class family living in a huge, fancy house, not a single financial care in the world.. yet all they did was waste their money on useless material items. Never bought anything nice for their pets, never bought decent food, toys, grooming products, or took them to the vet.

They treated their other animals the same way as well. My female cousin, Ashley, had rats. I later found out one had been sick and eventually died, and when I asked why the heck nobody took the poor thing to the vet, you know what my Aunt said? "Why would I waste money on a vet? If it dies, I'll just get another one."

Some people are the very definition of vile.
 
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