I don't know WHY this is so hard for animal owners to understand.

My friend and I were talking about how school starts back in two weeks. She's a teacher, I'm a mom of three. Her other friend was there. She's apparently a dog person. I mentioned how I'm not ready to start waking up at 6 again yet. My friend laughed and agreed. Her friend cut us off with a 'Oh please! I WISH I could sleep in that late! I'm lucky if I make it to 5am." I asked how old her kid was and she said "uh, no. I wish it was *that* simple. I have a puppy!"

Excuse me? You think taking a dog out to piss is anywhere in the same realm as getting three kids packed, dressed, and ready for school after little to no sleep (+ I have narcolepsy so even extra exhaustion) the night before? Like come on. Surely they aren't that delusional? She talked about her dog the rest of the conversation and I just stopped listening.

You all know those kinds of posts where something traumatic is happening, like a house that’s on fire and the question that gets asked is “who are you saving?” and “dog” is included in the list, we’re all familiar with those posts. Anyway, I’m getting so tired of those kinds of posts because I know what awaits in the comment section and it’s gonna make me turn red and blow up like a balloon and pop, and I’m starting to think that posts like that are made on purpose. I just ran into another one of those post like that and the dog was the 5th choice. What do ya’ll think?

Sometimes I like to go outside in the morning to sit on the patio with a coffee or walk around my garden area to pick vegetables. Typically around 7am on the weekend.

The problem is the neighbors indoor dog starts barking until I go back inside.

I feel bad because they probably want to sleep in and I'm probably seen as a bad neighbor for waking them up super early on a weekend. I feel bad but should I care? I'm not out there every morning and I'm not intentionally trying to be loud by slamming doors or running power equipment.

Do you have this problem? What do you do? Sometimes I get upset and think they decided to get a dog and they can deal with the noise and it's not my problem but other times I feel like I should do my best to avoid triggering it. I've only spoken to my neighbors briefly once in 5 years so I'm not comfortable asking them about it and setting up any sort of rules or schedules.

I used to have a roommate with two cats and he went away for a week and asked me to take care of his cats. I'd never done that before so I agreed, no big deal.

It took me scooping the litter box ONCE for me to decide I never wanted a cat.

At the time, I was already on the fence about not wanting any pets in general because they'd restrict my freedom, and that two-minute task of litter box scooping solidified me never wanting a cat ever.

So, I was chatting with this woman whom I was interested in a relationship with, only for her to tell me that she's no longer interested b/c she just saw on my reddit profile that I'm not into dogs (which actually, the fact it took her this long to notice when we'd been talking all day, was already telling), then tells me she's no longer interested in me. Like, if me not liking dog owners for their behavior, is a problem for you, then I'd say I dodged a bullet. Also, I love how her profile says she doesn't like unintelligent people, yet she can't figure out that it's not dogs or dog owners inherently, it's their fucking neglectful & abusive behavior I can't stand, then I clearly dodged a bullet there.

That’s it. That’s the post.

Like how can people live like this?!. This Neighbor has a cat and I was asked to feed it three times a day. When i got in this cat was jumping all over the kitchen counters. It was sitting on the plates and chopping boards where you prepare food. It’s hair was everywhere and I don’t know if it is just this particular cat, but it’s butthole is constantly on display & when it walks near your nose (because remember it’s jumping all over the counters) it smells like shit. The entire house smelled like urine from the litter box - on the third day i couldn’t stand it so i emptied the litter box and cleaned it with bleach followed by boiling water. It stank again not 3 hrs later. I feel like their urine is just super concentrated?!

Both my neighbours got cats at the same time (I’m in a terraced house and my neighbours houses are joined to mine on either side). I have (had?) a lovely garden where i plant flowers and grow food for me and my kids. Now these cats are shitting all in my plant bed. I have to pick the shit out daily so my toddler doesn’t touch it.

The robot mower was mowing the lawn today and malfunctioned - when i went to see what was wrong it had gone over a mouse left by one of the cats & got tangled, so i had to pick chewed up mouse guts out of its mechanics. Hopefully i don’t get hantavirus, that would be fun.

In the night the cats from each neighbour are fighting and wailing and it wakes me up. I think one is in heat so it is calling, and it is the loudest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

Why do i have to live like this because of my neighbours stupid decisions?

Remember that the current economy has me living in my mom’s house, who owns 4 dogs and 4 cats (I am allergic to both wastes of carbon) who make their way into the mezzanine where I live just to piss in the curtains. Over half of the terrain is plain grass for these dipshits, and yet they come piss here. I actually started hating animals and can’t wait to move out so I never have to deal with one again.

From my earliest memories, I was a passionate dog lover. I adored dogs and learning about dogs. They were my special interest. I wanted to even be a vet for most of my childhood (until I realized how math heavy vet studies were).

Just six years ago, I thought I'd always own a dog in my independent adult life. Dogs were wonderful, right?

Now I can't stand to be around one much. Owning a reactive dog for several years took the blinds off. Now, dogs are just a stress and anxiety trigger. I can barely even enioy media with dogs anymore.

I always hated cats, even at age 6 or 7. That never changed. The only difference is that I've become averse to cat culture and anything involving free-roaming cats. The more into animal welfare and animal rights I got, the more I hated feral cats as a concept.

Pets as a whole feel like an unnecessary financial and emotional burden. All take, no give.

Your fish barely knows you exist. Your snake doesn't care about you. Your birds are afraid of you on default. Your cat sees you as a meal ticket.

I unfortunately found out my dad's apartment building is caught on fire, fully engulfed from the inside reportedly and am terrified waiting for a phone call to find out if he got out safely. In tears. I see a post about it on facebook and there's tons of people saying "I hope the pets are safe."

I'm sorry, but so many people's concern over random pets not knowing there's people who are potentially losing family members is sending me into a rage, that's my rant.

I’m talking about Dog Nutters who deserved what they got. Nutters and the dogs themselves bring out this intense anger in me, so intense that I can’t even explain, that’s how annoying these people and these dogs are, like what the hell is wrong with them? As soon as I hear barking and it doesn’t stop, I start to have dark fantasies while thinking about the dog and dog owner, and I don’t want to have these fantasies, and I want to yell “shut the fuck up” so loud. When it comes to this barking dog near my house in my neighborhood, and I can hear it while in my room, I slam the window shut in anger, and I turn on multiple things to drown out that noise, I would turn on my fan, play something on YouTube on my phone and turn the volume all the way up and play something else on another YouTube account of mine on my other phone, and turn volume all the way up on that phone too, and sometimes the tv too (whenever I go down stairs). Whenever my mom (another dog owner) ask me to clean out her car in the garage, I dread hearing this fucking dog before I go into the garage, I have this wet and dry vacuum cleaner and love that it’s so loud and it drowns out that fucking barking, but I hate that I have to eventually turn it off for a second to do something else like pull the two front seats forward or back and I know that doing that takes about 10 seconds but you see, that’s not the really the issue here, It’s that as soon as I turn that vacuum off to pull the two front seats forward or back, the dog is still barking it’s head off and I can’t even hear that barking for exactly 3 damn seconds, not even a second. And when when I’m completely done with the car and turn the vacuum off and the dog isn’t being a nuisance in the moment, I hurry up wrap things up and go in the house before it begans being a fucking dumb ass again.

I think that if someone isn't able to make their pets unable to damage or cause distress to the guests, that someone isn't able to have one. Everytime I go to my friend's home I have to "worry" for her cat. Everytime one of us opens the kitchen door it enters like a bullet and it's almost impossible to take him out. He likes my shoes so much that he continues to attach to them and scratch them at non stop. He also likes to destroy my backpack and everytime I try to make it stop he scratches me. Apparently he likes me a lot but have to stop destroying my clothes, my backpack, my hands and my everything.

Now, I understand that the meds my friend takes make her sleep for 14hrs straight, however: can you fucking take care of him? He is obviously bored and wants attentions. Do you play with him? Do you take him out some times? If you aren't able to take care of him or you can't make your guests comfortable in order to avoid 24hrs stress of him you can't afford to have one.

I’ve had to walk home too many times just to turn the hose on to wash it off not only my shoes but my wagon wheels that I push my kids in. We go every morning for 2 miles and it’s supposed to be a fun refreshing way to start the morning with my kids but NOPE. Every couple of weeks I end up stepping in it on accident if I put my guard down because god forbid I don’t feel like staring at the ground for 45 minutes. We walk the same or a similar route around the city so I’m determined to find the culprit because it feels like almost all of my neighbors have at least one dog if not more. If you own a dog and chose to walk it be a responsible owner and clean the poop up genuinely how hard is that??

Recently my boyfriend of six years (we do not live together) recently took in a stray kitten (I grew up with a cat I loved as a child so I get it to some degree) regardless of emotions or the overly high vet bill to save the kitten who was bounced of the litter fine by all means you do you at your home. He recently has been saying different things eluding to us moving in together, and before hand when it had came up he had always said he would get rid of his two cats (has three now). I ended up watching the said new kitten while he traveled out of state, which was just too much in itself between attention, keeping an eye on him, and cleaning my home profusely after he was back home where he belonged. The experience of watching the cat and having my days disrupted was enough to make me know I am not a pet owner/lover (granted cute kitten but more cute when it's not using its claws to climb up the back of my sofa and someone else's). Short story long, how does one deal with this ? I feel like it's a major incompatibility factor, because I feel it is selfish of me to expect someone to get rid of their animals, but also I am not willing to live with, and have my things abused by cats (or a dog as he occasionally wishes for). Before anyone comes at me I have other doubts too , but any words of advice or thoughts are appreciated.

So I was just looking at this TikTok where this lady, two young kids and the dad, is surrounding their dog that’s about to die, the dad is kind of crying and the mom is crying the worst, now I’m not saying that it’s bad to cry for the death of your dog but it just seems weird to me, you would think that it’s a human loved one who’s about to pass, because of how they’re grieving, especially the mom. And I think it’s weird that they had to record it, like the world doesn’t need to know, even when it comes to a human loved one nobody has to know. If y’all want to know the username of the TikTok account to see the video, I’ll comment it but the caption says “When you lose your soul dog… apart of you goes with them”, now… when it comes to this soulmate thing, isn’t it usually two individuals who’ve connected with each other? And if the dog is her soul dog, then why is the husband really there? Am I missing something? Dogs for sure don’t have souls, I know that.

Dogs know they’re going for a walk, so they start to get excited, the dog (in particular) that I have to live with is a Pit Bull Boxer, the dumb thing gets so hyperactive because IT knows IT’S going for a walk, it’s the sudden fast movement that’s enough to startle someone, and what I mean by that sudden fast movement, one of my siblings are about to take IT for a walk, and it’s like every time my sibling makes a movement (getting ready to take the dog for a walk) the stupid dog makes a sudden fast moment as if it’s going to take off running but it’s really not, IT just ends up looking back at my sibling every time, as if IT’S saying “are you coming?”. Like chill the fuck out you stupid thing, he’s not ready yet, and he still has to put on his shoes and jacket!! And dogs in general are so damn dumb, they get so excited that they can’t even keeping fucking still for just 1 second so you can put the leash on. It depends on the breed I believe, some breeds aren’t too damn hyper active when IT knows IT’S going for a walk. And this stupid thing would sometimes eat IT’S food or drink water then after, IT would just be hyperactive for whatever reason and that causes the stupid thing to throw up.

I have to rant and vent about this.Since I know myself,my family has pets,it was always cats at first,and then they got obsessed with dogs too.I loved animals,just like them.The thing is,after getting covid in hs,I got allergic to them.That allergy,since then was getting worse and worse and it fr reached a point where I just need to be in a room where cat or dog was and I swell up like a balloon.They made some slight changes but after me getting so bad that I developed mcas and now can't eat anything without throat closing and hives.In the meantimet,they adopted dog even tho they knew about my situation.I was begging them on my knees and crying to not keep the dog,cause the dog just showed up,it wasn't our duty to keep it.But nope,instead they started babying him,treating it better than they ever treated me.It was my birthday too in that month.Nope,dog matters more.I even told them,me or dog.They chose dog ofc.I ran away from home but that is not working out for me at all cause of my chronic illness.I mean my symptoms are much much better,I feel like a different person in a good way,mentally so much better and I'm not swollen chronically anymore,but I have to come back due to some other health issues unfortunately.And there it is,their unhealthy obsession is not letting them rehome the dog,I rehome cats,rehome at least the dog.And I'm so angry and disappointed at them.My health is ruined forever and I'm so young,I'm the youngest in our family.They don't give a shit as long as they can have their "doggo" and "fur babies".I hate that my life came to this...And I hate all this dog and cat craze.And I hate that there's no other sub where I can talk about this without getting like infinite amount of down votes.Irl I get called evil for saying this.I need to be per free cause living with pets is ruining my health and life.And people who pretend that they care,don't care about it.

I know this is too long and probably boring to most but I really don't have anywhere else to say this,cause on health issues related subs,no matter which one,people jump at you for this stuff.They refuse to accept possibility that someone has to be pet free,instead they suggest tons of meds that I already use regardless and those meds has their limits,they don't help me when I'm not pet free and I didn't even used to need them earlier when I was pet free for a short time,but due to horrible chronic exposure to pets i developed allergies to everything so now I need meds forever.

I'm so mad about this.

I begged them to not get another one...

It's definitely obsession for them,not even love,cause they're not treating those animals with love either . They just feed them and let them to run around and even punish them with beating :(

Everything is loosing in this situation expect them,not even those pets are happy.

The craziest thing is that that dog if got rehomed,it wouldn't even be sad,especially not at the beginning when I begged them to rehome it cause my symptoms got extremely bad,like I genuinely didn't know that pet allergy can do you like that.They still didn't give a shit even tho it was very visible.I resent them,I even started kinda hating pets too even tho I know it's not pets fault.But I had to say this somewhere.

Went to the laundromat to do my laundry today and opened the door to this TINY little laundromat (I cannot express enough how absolutely tiny this place is like no joke my living room is bigger) and was greeted by a white woman with dreads, her man (who kept talking about smoking weed and she hilariously was like trying to talk to him in a way that was obviously to try to convince me that she doesn’t smoke weed currently which like lady you literally have dreads as a white lady and a pitbull - you DEFINITELY smoke weed as a matter of fact I think you must be high rn to even think this was okay in the first place), and not one, not two, but THREE dogs AND a cat in this tiny ass laundromat with little signs on every single washing machine and the door that says “ABSOLUTELY NO ANIMAL BEDDING”. And then a guy came by who the man thought might be the owner (he wasn’t) and said that he wasn’t the owner but that the owner would be pissed. And then the guy was like well there’s no “no dogs” sign as if that needed to be posted for a normal person to understand bringing animals into a place people are going to CLEAN their clothes is unacceptable and then he proceeded to make fun of the random, not the owner guy, because he dared say that the owner wouldn’t be pleased with them bringing four animals inside of the dang laundromat. Why are these people like this? I wish I didn’t HAVE to do my laundry today because now all my shit is covered in fucking animal hair 🙃

I posted here 52 days ago that I was waiting to be pet-free. The original shelter that we adopted from was supposed to take them back tomorrow but now they are asking if we can postpone until later this month. First it was “sometime in June.” Then tomorrow. Now later this month. I’m not good at confrontation, but I’m trying to stay firm. I feel like I should just be grateful that the pet-free day will eventually come and that it probably just requires a little more patience on my part. If you have any tips on how to respond to them, please share. If you’d like to share how long it took you to finally be pet-free (from when you started actively trying to rehome), please share. I do know someone who was on a waitlist for 6 months. I’m just wondering if I’m expecting too much too soon.

Edit to add: They responded back to my firm message. Our pets have been officially surrendered.

I’m not speaking for anyone, I’m sure some people have this same thing in mind though, but I just can’t stand how certain dogs look, it would make me say to the dog (with an irritated voice) “just give me a reason to blah blah blah, please give me reason” even though IT doesn’t know what I’m saying of course. All dogs are annoying, but it’s certain dogs that I can’t stand, and in terms of looks, because they even look like they’re annoying as fuck, which is why I said what I said right above (in quote) and again all dogs are annoying but it’s like different levels to me, I have a relative who owns a Cane Corso and It’s not so much annoying to me, still annoying, but no so much, hell I don’t even get annoyed when it follows me and gets in my face even while I’m eating but I shoo it away when eating, and it still smells hella bad and that breath (I would just pull the collar part of my shirt over my nose) so yeah it’s about the looks, and the ones that look annoying… don’t follow me, don’t get in my face, especially when I’m eating and don’t even look at me 😂 And to me, Cane Corsos look sleepy and mad all the time, my relative’s Cane Corso would look at me in a certain way and it just looks mad 😂 but it’s really not, I would describe it as… it’s laying in a lion’s pose position and it would look up at me with it’s eyes, so it’s not exactly face to face. And the dog’s I can’t stand how they look, they look goofy, dumb and annoying as fuck. I admit that I wish I could like some dogs (like my relative’s Cane Corso) but they’re still annoying too 🤷‍♂️ not so much and they’re still gross as hell and stink.

I’m asking this in good faith because I’d like to understand the ethical distinction.
Many people argue that zoos are unethical because they keep animals in captivity and prevent them from living in their natural environment.
If that’s the case, why is keeping dogs (or other pets) in our homes generally viewed as acceptable? They’re also living outside the environment their ancestors evolved in, and humans control nearly every aspect of their lives.
Is the difference simply that dogs have been domesticated? Or is there another ethical principle that makes these situations fundamentally different?
I’m genuinely interested in hearing different perspectives, especially from people who care about animal welfare.

Anyone else seeing dog fatigue trending on tiktok and youtube? People are finally starting to wake up to the truth! They get into things like those creatures not belonging in stores, establishments etc as well as how gross they are. I'm hoping it stays trending for years to come and it goes even further! 🤞

I believe modern pet culture has become increasingly excessive, particularly on social media.

Take this video for example: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/p7EKRf_usE8

Videos such as "Feeding my child today," where the "child" is actually a pet being served elaborate meals, may seem humorous to some people, but they also reflect a cultural shift that makes my stomach turn 1,000 miles per hour.

Referring to pets as though they are literally children can blur the distinction between caring for an animal and caring for another human being.

What concerns me more is the imbalance in priorities that is sometimes celebrated online. Every day, millions of real children experience hunger, poverty, homelessness, abuse, and lack of access to healthcare or education. These are not hypothetical problems—they are real humanitarian crises affecting vulnerable human beings.

Social media platforms like Tiktok and Youtube often rewards extravagant spending on pets, for example; gourmet meals, luxury accessories, designer clothing, expensive birthday parties, and lavish lifestyles. The issue arises when society appears to celebrate these displays far more enthusiastically than efforts to help children living in desperate circumstances, stories about child poverty, famine, or humanitarian aid receive comparatively little engagement. This creates an online culture where people may become more emotionally invested in fictional narratives surrounding pets than in the lives of real children facing unimaginable hardship.

Please do not buy into this. You destroy your own soul.