Owning a family pet: A rant about abandoning pets; not at a shelter.

Recently I have noticed that more and more people are coming onto hard times and dropping more of their four legged family members off at local shelters or simply dropping them off in the middle of nowhere to let fate have its hand at their friend.

Owning a pet is much more of a responsibility than that. When you buy or adopt a pet, you have to remember that the pet needs you. It needs you to feed it and take care of it.

I understand when someone has to take their animal to the shelter due to financial hardships; at least they are giving the pet a fighting chance at finding another home. However, when someone leaves their animal out to fend for itself it just makes me sick.

I’m not going to sit here and preach that dogs are people too, because they’re not; they are dogs. However, dogs have feelings and when they live with people long enough they come to expect certain things. Then again, perhaps I am just extremely attached to my own dogs.

I say this because over the past few weeks there has been a dog that has just been allowed to roam my neighborhood. He is a huge chocolate lab and he will sit at my door and whine to be let in. We learned last night that he lives about 3 houses down from our own and the owner is never home and his neighbor is just as irritated with the situation as we are. People who just let their dogs roam the neighborhood freely shouldn’t be allowed to have dogs. This is why most places have ordinances to keep dogs on a leash or in a fence.