Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/23/science-says-puppies-are-bad-for-your-mental-health.html
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By those metrics, kids must be an utter disaster.
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Contributed by Gail Sherman
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Insanity is hereditary, you catch it from your children.
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And babies don’t even grow up to be dogs; disappointment all round.
Jokes aside, the literature is…mixed at best…on children as a sound happiness strategy.
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The only time I found that to be true was when all six had broken out of their safe spot and emptied themselves throughout the very long hallway.
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Puppies are a lot of work, similar as if you had a baby. A part of the source of stress is a person not being familiar with dog behavior and how to raise/train a young pup. Though regardless of how savvy a person is i would always consider getting a puppy or any young animal a really rewarding experience.
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Ah-ha-ha, my local humane society has a filter available to only show animals 5 years old or older. (From which we have adopted (then) 10 year old and 9 year old dogs.) Take that anxiety!
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Incidentally, that’s an adorable dog. I just wat to scritch the ears it is hiding behind its enthusiasm face.
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Just thought I’d get this out there now rather than waiting.
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Unfortunately there’s the other side of the life cycle as well. I miss my wee dog-beast a great deal; but I’m not sure I could ever get another one because of how it feels to lose them, and it’s been over a decade at this point. Not a great picture; but a great dog.
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Science can fuck right off …
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I like dogs and cats, but I’ve only ever dealt with raising kittens and will try to avoid ever doing that again. I’ll adopt a one-year, or older, cat but kittens are off the table as they are insane.
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Ah, this explains my issues.
(Note: these are not my puppies…for one thing they are two years old now, these were fosters, the place my wife use to do kitten fostering for called us and said “I know you are down for kittens only, no puppies, but we have 7 and the foster we had lined up can’t do it with thanksgiving coming up, can you?”…she and I made solemn promises to each other not to adopt a puppy, so we had these little asshats in our house for a few months, mostly house trained them, I mean we did lose that carpet…and we adopted two of them because that doesn’t break our solemn promise does it?)
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I’ve raised puppies and a way too young abandoned kitten (about 2-3 days old). The kitten was difficult because… well it was abandoned and raising any living being yourself instead of its momma is going to be tough. Kitten also caught a respiratory infection which made things even more stressful, but overall i wouldn’t say it was any worse for me than raising an energetic Samoyed puppy that liked to chew everything.
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My dog liked to eat condoms, each one was an expensive and embarrassing $350 trip to the vet.
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If owning a pet fails to elevate the spirits, then there’s only one thing for it:
Outsource the stressful part, and look at lots of pictures of cute animals on the internet!
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Mental health-adverse moment this morning: our black kitty decided to investigate whether the fox who was trotting along the sidewalk knew that it was in violation of turf boundaries. The fox already had breakfast in its gob, fortunately (for the fox, not breakfast).
To be fair, kitty had Mum and Dad there as backup, which always turns her into a beserker with other animals.
When asked by my daughter (regularly) why we don’t have a dog, I reply that our kids are already a lot of work, we don’t need more.
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