Dogs -
I know they are good for humanity with getting their owners for walks, loyalty, etc. But have no idea how people get hooked on them with the picking up hot feces and 25% chance of getting a barking/jumping lunatic that you have to rearrange your life every 6 hours around their bathroom habits...
You need to have one to understand the unconditional loyalty, love, and the bond. You come to appreciate it even more once you lose them. Having a dog is the best and worst thing in the world. Just lost our fur baby a week ago...
A joke I read recently: "A fortune teller told me I was going to experience the most terrible heartbreak in twelve years time. This totally bummed me out, so I got a dog to cheer me up."
It's actually not that unconditional, and is something you have to work for. They will of course be happy that you come from work and show affection as they are social animals, but there are definitely different levels of affection even within a single household.
The same reason people generally don't regret having kids even though the commitment and overall change of your life are much greater than what you described for dogs.
They are objectively similar in that both are a big multi-decade commitment to a living being that you chose for yourself (yes, you did choose to have the kid unless you live in a country with no birth control access) but saying something is similar is still not making a value comparison
Yeah of course you can choose the level of evaluating how things are similar. Yes they both breathe. Yes they have DNA. Both are objectively true.
Also, you keep saying value comparison like it's something I used against OP. I never mentioned anything about dog <=> child, nor did OP. I just meant that the core decision of having either is different, so it's not comparable even though you could boil it down to "you care for both".
I'm mixed. I always wanted a dog as an adult because I grew up with dogs. But, maybe because it was a different time, the dogs didn't run our lives. Serially, they lived in our backyard. They had access to a dog house in the garage. And we gave them food and played with them. I was also a kid so no idea what my parents went through but I certainly didn't see them fretting over the dog and we rarely if ever took them for a walk.
But now I see any of my friend and family that have dogs re-arrange their lives around them. One friend will never stay out more than 2 hours because "gotta get back to the dogs". So, dinner and a movie is out since that would be more than 2 hours. A family member is similar, gotta get home for the dogs. This family member would also not be ok to check them into a dog hotel for a longer family vacation so we haven't had one in 10 years.
So, seeing examples like these and others, I haven't been able to convince myself to do it. I kept waiting until I had a house with a yard like I grew up in but that never happened.
You don't pick up your dog's poop? You don't take them out regularly? I mean sure, there are scenarios where these aren't true, but for the vast majority of dog owners, it very much does happen like that.
