Leaving Your Pets Behind
I can’t believe this bullshit, according to the article, people are actually abandoning their pets at the airports, because they didn’t plan ahead on how to travel with their pets.
I think that I have just reached a whole new level of being pissed off. I can not believe that people are actually doing this. I mean adopting a tortoise, is a long time commitment in itself. We are talking about an animal that will likely outlive you, and you ditch it in the bathroom at the airport, likely because you were told it had to go as checked luggage. Traveling with pets is difficult at best, so maybe your dumb ass needs to call the airline beforehand.
My pets are family members and they have almost the same rights as my children. This means that my dogs, cats, hens, and horses live a very nice cushy life. They are pets, yes, but we treat them like family and they are very spoiled. I could NEVER abandon them like this. If I was traveling and found out that I can’t travel with my pet, I would not take that flight and figure out another plan. I have never flown with a pet before, but my assumption is that people realized that they can’t travel with their pets, so they just abandon them.
I could never imagine leaving an animal like that before. We once had a dog that we thought we might have to rehome, and the biggest thing that kept me from saying, let’s do it, was that I would ALWAYS think about how is that dog doing in his new life and with his new family, is he safe, and not being abused. Then I realized that I love him and I need to figure a way around his silly games. I have never had to do anything like rehoming a pet, we have always prided ourselves as a family to be able to keep that pet in the family forever, we are their forever home. And since all of our pets are rescues, we are determined to never send them back to the shelter, that isn’t a life we want any animal to have to live. So when I say spoil, here are some of the ways we spoil our pets. I’m including our bunny, who recently passed.
Our current dog, Roxie has been with us for five years this past Christmas (her birthday is a week before Christmas). Unlike our other dogs, he is allowed on the furniture only when we are not in the room unless invited, don’t worry she has a super cushy bed in just about every room. This is because she has a little bit of a drooling problem when she sleeps and we don’t like sitting on wet spots on the couch.
We found her at the local shelter, well, she found us. We always believe that they will find you all her siblings were so excited and running around and acting like, well, wild boys, and she was so timid and shy, she just walked up to us and greeted us and played with us. Yep, that counts, she picked us.
She doesn’t get a ton of walks, but that is by design. We made the mistake of when she was younger, we walked and ran her often and she loved to play tug of war. The problem is that she is an American Bull and Beagle mix, and she ended up with the skeletal frame of the beagle and the muscles of the pit. She literally pulled her own knees apart when she was younger (there wasn’t anything we could have done to avoid it according to the vet). She has since had surgery and had new knees, but we are careful not to let her “beef” up too much and destroy these knees.
Like the cats and the rabbit, she has free range of the house, can sleep on a bed, and for her meals, she has a mix of moist all veggie food and dry food (she isn’t into human food at all, if she is given it, she carries it around in her mouth for hours and whines)
Our 10 cats are all rescues too, rescued from a local barn that was allowing their cats to overbreed and then allowing the babies to accumulate. In this case we TNR’s the adults and got them altered and the babies were being taken home by a group of us and finding homes. And 10 of them found homes in our house. They are from four different litters and three different moms. They are 100% house cats, with a couple of them being leashed and trained to go outdoors.
They also have a free range of the house, beds included. There are cat beds and cat trees all over the house, except in the master bedroom, which is designated for sleep. For meals,
it is a variety of canned moist food from premium brands not sold in most grocery stores (they just don’t like fresh meat like a leftover turkey from thanksgiving).
The bunny had a full range of the house including beds and he loved to hang out on the lower levels of the cat trees and watch TV on the couch. He had a three-story house that he loved to hang out in as well. For meals, he got fresh timothy hay, dry rabbit food mix, and twice a day a large helping of fresh veggies, he loved his Kale and Cilantro the most.
The chickens as adults live outside, but when they were hatchlings and chicks, they lived in the house in a large container. They are backyard hens and they too are spoiled. They have a large coop in the backyard, protected by several levels of wire. For meals, they get corn scratched, they get bird seed, and a handful of dried worms, plus they have grit and oyster shells all day long. In the warmer months, they enjoy fresh veggies. and they love the turkey carcass from Thanksgiving dinner, I know, right?
The horses are very spoiled, with a large field for them to roam, three places for water, two shelters, and other horses to interact with across the fence. For meals, they have fresh orchard grass hay all day long, they get fed it out of hay bags because horses will eat all day long if given the opportunity. They enjoy candy canes when in season, and apples and carrots are among their favorite treats. They also get grain and supplements at dinner time, every day.
My critters are as much a family as any of us are. I could never leave them behind and alone like this, that is just wrong.
