another dog opinion: people need to stop immediately freaking out when they see a dog left in a car outside a store. as long as the car window is open and the temperature isn’t dangerous there’s no reason to automatically assume the dog’s owner is doing something malicious. i’ve left my dog in the car to get something in a store quickly. he is in fact alive and well now
no but people will literally call the cops over this. it’s insane.
You’ll find a lot more joy in the having of a cat if you would just stop expecting it to act like a dog.
And not just any dog, but the ‘perfect dog’ that people always compare cats to.
Cats are not dogs. But also, cats and dogs are not a hivemind with only one personality per species.
“My cat flipped out the first time I put a harness and leash on it, you can’t take them on walks like a dog!” Buddy, pal, friend. You go put a harness and leash on an adult backyard-only dog for the first time and tell me just how well that goes for you.
“They are horrible to bathe!”…. Sure, if you put an adult cat just straight into the water or the loud scary shower that hasn’t ever had a bath in its life. But my foster kittens get bathed often. They don’t care at all. If their adopters kept that up, they’d be fine as adults, too. But it’s not like dogs are naturally any better, either. My girl dog straight up panics in the bath and will try to scale the walls and urinate in her fear. I do not bathe her unless absolutely necessary.
“Dogs are great in the car and cats are not” …. rinse, repeat of the previous arguments. Training. Not all dogs good with cars. Not all cats bad with cars. Stop it.
i understand the sentiment with the whole “people prefer dogs over cats because cats have boundaries” thing but dogs have boundaries too. i feel like people need to stop acting like dogs don’t also have boundaries
Fun fact! The main reason chihuahuas have a reputation for being “mean” is that people deliberately tease them and ignore warning signals they’d otherwise heed if it were a medium- to large- breed. Goading your pet into a growling fit for a “funny” video isn’t cute!
People often treat small dogs’ warning signals as funny, and punish big dogs’, because they think a big dog growling is dangerous. No, it’s telling you it was something to stop, just like small dogs are. If you take that away, either by punishing or disregarding it as funny and continuing, what you get is a dog who feels the need to escalate closer to biting without warning next time.
I was recording these cute dogs in someone’s yard I saw on a walk and started using my cringey dog-sweet-talk voice only to realize after looking back at the recording…the dogs’ owner was standing there silently the whole time.
ifesbob 