Pet training is a highly acceptable practice in many circles. But pet training is more than satisfactory– it’s a human necessity, necessary to and becoming an issue with those of us who have neighbours with errant, “unruly” pets, for example. In my neighbourhood, that is, people have dogs that they consider nuisances because they are dogs–because they chew household furniture as puppies because they dig up gardens because they relieve themselves inside when no one’s home to let them out. My neighbours, for example, get a dog, leave it inside, go off to work, and come home to a bed that has lost its legs. They shove the dog outside, go off again (for ten hours a day), and return to utterly destroyed flower beds. They build a pen and lock her in it (what I consider the equivalent of closing a human in a bathroom for ten hours a day), and leave. For ten hours, the dog barks. And barks. And barks.
I suggested pet training classes, which are kinder than blaming and punishing the dog for being a dog. No, they griped. I offered to pay for the pet training classes. Still, they scoffed. I offered to study up on, pay for, and attend the pet training classes in their stead. The dog is still locked in, daily, as they go off in freedom and release. Maybe there are people training courses somewhere, huh?
When you have the urge for a pet, try to take into consideration all of the above variables, making sure, as much as is possible, that you can feed, pay for health needs for, and attend to the everyday grooming, exercising, and other requirements of an animal before you adopt a pet that you wouldn’t want to abandon any more than you would be left a child that wasn’t cute anymore or cost a lot to feed.
