My dream plate. Stolen from me.

A week ago I saw two interesting videos on tiktok.

One was a farmer with a livestock guardian dog he was putting down. The videos of the dog showed it to be in good enough health that you’d not think it’s the dog’s time. The dog was being put down because after over 10 years of guarding sheep, he had come across the dog eating one of his sheep while it was still alive. He said the dog had cognitive decline and was acting strange lately, and after that incident there was no place for the dog anymore where the dog would be comfortable but also away from others it could harm. The comments were sympathetic, that it was the dogs time because it didn’t know what was going on anymore.

The second video was of a woman who was putting down her golden retriever which was her best friend of 12 years. The dog had mauled her 3 year old son. More information about the dog: he had been on pain meds for 2 years already, so we can assume arthritis and possibly other issues of old age. The dog had never been fond of her son, and had bit her son before (less severely), and she had said that time it was not the dog’s fault. So she has some understanding of how her animal works and that she made a mistake by letting her son do something it didn’t like. The dog had mauled her son as he walked past the dog which she claims happened out of no where. The son was okay but had tons of stitches. On this video the comments were full of blame, and why hadn’t she done more for the dog.

There’s a few interesting things to compare here, like how mostly agricultural people understood why the first dog had to go- many said its behaviour was a sign that it was obviously confused and likely scared because it no longer remembered what it’s entire life had entailed. The commenters in the second video were mostly full of blame with a few ideas- rehome the dog (rehome an arthritic 12 year old dog that had been with one person its whole life?), work up a system to keep them separated (maybe? But then the dog would basically never get attention again because a toddler needs constant supervision). I think both dogs had reached a similar point in their journeys. The welfare-minded situation is to euthanize both dogs.

I do choose believe the woman in the second video where she says it was out of no where, I’ve noticed senior animals do start to operate on slightly different rules. I’ve noticed it in my own dogs. My last dog and my ferret had been best friends for years, until her arthritis set in. I had to keep them apart for the rest of my dogs life because I was certain she would bite him for jumping on her. As they get chronic pain, their thresholds greatly decrease, and if you add in the cognitive decline from old age you get an unpredictable element to their behaviour at times. And I do think once a dog reaches that point in their life- pain and a constant state of confusion- euthanasia is an appropriate choice. I do wonder how often a senior, well loved dog, ends up mauling the family cat out of no where now…

I hate that I watched the office so many times (and I haven’t watched the office in at least 3-4 years at this point) that my ears perked up cuz the Amazon prime version has dialogue cuts I’ve never heard before.

AHHHHHH!! MY SPECIAL GIRL!

I like it here. I’ve been ignoring my hour of TikTok a day limit cuz like, it’s winter holidays so whatever. But when I do that I start to see such scary content. Anti-intellectualism is on the rise so bad. The quality of our institutions (healthcare and education - both Canada and USA) has plummeted for different reasons but still we’re at the same end result. This drop in quality has (fairly, you could argue) resulted in a massive drop in public trust of those institutions. I feel like we’re living in idiocracy but it’s been achieved in 5 years, not 500. There’s no point to this post but I’ve been seeing such scary content and it’s been making me angry and worked up and not able to sleep at night.

well that's fine i guess. my petz crashes when i go somewhere with mini games now. did not do that before.