-What do you think about the pet/parent analogies? Are you a dog mom? A cat dad? A platypus owned by a dirty owl? What’s your take?
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I fucking cringe when I’m referred to as my cat or dog’s “Dad”? Are you inferring that someone in my near family fucks animals? Or that I fuck animals? If I have to take a title, as per my relationship with my animals, it’d be “Custodial Thumb Haver”. I love them deeply and genuinely feel lucky to have them. But they aren’t my kids. Because I don’t have kids. We have a mutually beneficial and emotional relationships. I didn’t have to fuck a cat or dog to have that.
That's not really how it went. First we started working with wolves to hunt and share the food. That only worked because the wolves were willing to work with us.
Then we started to have them live with us to have a reliable hunting partner rather than incidental cooperation, and again that worked because there were wolves willing to live with us the first place. Those had to naturally evolve before we could have a chance to "artificially" select traits.
Then we bred them more to do more specific hunting (dachshunds to catch badgers, bird dogs to retrieve birds, etc) and for other jobs (like St Bernards). All the while they were "hijacking our child caring neurons" which is why we also ended up breeding them to be cute and "kid mode".