Gentrifying of Pet Adoption. Notice the couple that adpoted the dog "oh I work from home".
How lucky and privileged.
Why won’t shelters and rescues let people adopt dogs?
Millions of dogs need homes. Why is it sometimes hard to adopt one?
One disturbing thing I’m seeing in recent years is the financialization of veterinary care. Pet insurance is starting to be an almost required component of owning a pet and costs are predictably skyrocketing. You take your pet for a checkup and it’s a couple hundred bucks. Sixty dollars for a nail trim.
Then you have the ticks of private equity starting to burrow in to the system (https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pe-deals-veterinary-clinics-pet-care) and now we can see a replication of the for-profit model of American healthcare starting to take shape for pets
We love our pets and are willing to go to great lengths to keep them healthy and happy, a tendency that financial vampires are salivating to exploit. And unlike human health care we are lacking even the most gossamer of consumer protections.
The one ghoul they interview hints at this when he says pet ownership is becoming more expensive so “the bottom of the market will be priced out”
“Pricing out” in this case is animals going to shelters, and when they are full, the nitrogen chamber.
It’s almost a perfect parallel to homelessness in people, but they can’t gas the homeless… yet
Cyberpunk 2077 had lots of little elevator newsbreaks but the one that sticks with me is the city flooding the sewers with nerve gas to take care of the mutant rat/homeless people population, which are considered to be in the same category of problem to solve
What exactly cause someone to adopt and then return? I don’t know much about pet ownership.
According to the video, the primary driver is inflation. Pet food costs money, veterinary treatment costs more. I personally would not be able to afford my dog if my mom wasn't helping me out with vet costs.
Damn. That sucks. i never considered the costs of taking care and loving an animal to be so hard. I would imagine people get a pet to have something to love and be loved by, it sucks it’s super expensive
Although not universal pet care, Corbyn’s 2018 manifesto included government subsidies for pet care, along with the right to have a pet in rented accommodation. There was a bunch of animal rights stuff too.
Thankfully he failed as Labour leader and now we have Keith der Sturmer cranking up the racism dial.
You know every time this sort of thing comes up everyone (outside hexbear, y'all cool) is like oohhhh noo how horrible how can these people treat animals like consumables or things and like motherfucker have you seen how people eat? Animals aren't actually living beings to most people, they're crops or stuff
There's also the possibility that many people lost their wfh jobs and now had a pet that they expected to be able to care for, but now couldn't because they were at work all day.
There's definitely ways to see this phenomenon as less of a massive moral failing of people with pets, and maybe they just knew that they couldn't both work and take care of a pet because their circumstances have changed since the beginning of the pandemic.
If you gambled pet ownership on the idea that you would never lose your job or wfh in or after the pandemic that's entirely on you.
I'm not saying it makes you an irredeemable monster or whatever, but either you didn't think this through one bit or you figured "eh, could always give it away" and I find neither things particularly good when it comes to owning a living being
I understand, I'm just trying to re-interpret this narrative from "evil people" to "people forced into circumstances that upended their lives"
I know a lot of people who can juggle a full-time job and a pet by themselves, and they had a pet before the pandemic. This is showing that many more people would be able to care for a pet if they had a more humane work schedule.
I do see your side though, that a pet to many is seen not as a member of the family, but as a commodity or toy and that can also boil down to societal conditions.
I understand, I’m just trying to re-interpret this narrative from “evil people” to “people forced into circumstances that upended their lives”
Never attribute to malice etc. etc.
I don't think people returning pets are evil. The idea that they are is exactly what I'm critiquing, actually. Everyone getting their panties in a bunch over how evil these people are, meanwhile, no one gives two shits about animals otherwise. Ohhh nooo someone who figured they couldn't care for a dog gave them away to an institution for exactly this scenario, how terrible. I will tell my family this over our veal dinner.
I do see your side though, that a pet to many is seen not as a member of the family, but as a commodity or toy and that can also boil down to societal conditions.
I'd argue animal here more than pet since the distinction is arbitrary anyways but otherwise, spot on. I mean this shit is arguably no different than rescuing an animal you didn't want or can care for to me, it's just sort of a "two wrongs make a right" situation here as to what kind of animals it happens to.
But I do believe that if you're one of these people you should take a look at how you got into the situation and think about the set of values you hold that led you there are all that great or consistent in itself.
Definitely agree, there's a much deeper discussion to be had here about how animals are treated and commodified by basically all developed societies. We have really moved past the need for meat (something that made more sense when the pastures were natural and smoking could preserve enough calories to last a winter before refrigeration).
When animals are no longer a necessary source of calories to survive in less fertile climates due to massive increases in agricultural output, there's no conceivable reason to continue their exploitation. However, under the current mode of production, with the political power gained by the ranching class (in America, a direct result of Manifest Destiny and exploitation of native populations of humans and animals), the narrative can never be allowed to enter the realm of sanity.
There must always be diversion from the systemic powers that create and perpetuate the massively inefficient and unethical meat industry because we can never question it. Only question the ethics of individual "consumers" who interact with that system for which no alternative has been allowed to be built.
Actually doing it to a person makes it a completely different thing because producing kids is an indiscussable human right under any circumstances (for obvious reasons) and getting a dog isnt
what a monstrous take.
no one has the right to subject me to what my life has been.
I'm sorry for whatever happened but I don't think whatever happened was intrinsically linked to you being born
