Treating Pets as Fur Babies- Harmful or Helpful? Or taking care of pets in the world today

This blog is focusing on just felines and canines as this is the authors’ expertise.

By:  Dr Jennifer J Goetz

The Concept people write about:  Treating pets as fur babies causes decreased quality of life and suffering.

• Dogs left alone all day are unhappy.  Village dogs hanging around in groups, or packs, have a better quality of life. 
• Preventive medicine allows pets to live longer at the expense of quality of life.  
• Advanced treatments are often chosen while losing site of the best thing for the individual animal, the best quality of life and the cost for the owner
• Corporations make millions of dollars selling useless items for pets that cause harm.
• Corporate Veterinary Medicine turns the focus towards making money, not the best care for pets.
• Misinformation on the internet more often causes more misinformation and suffering for pets than it helps.

My Thoughts (from someone who began working in Veterinary Medicine in the 1980s):

1. Many of these concepts are not as new as they appear.
   1. As long as cats and dogs have been domesticated, there have been two schools of thought:  Quality of life is better when they live outside as nature intended vs quality of life is better inside where they are protected from attacks from trauma and disease.
   2. Wellness testing and vaccinations are not natural and harmful.
   3. Being old and being happy are often opposite ends of the spectrum 
   4. Veterinarians and all doctors are only in the business to make money.  
   5. I/my friend/my family member/the breeder has always done the same thing with dogs/cats and it’s worked so far so it must be fine.  


2. Let’s think about people like we think about pets:
   1. Working all day from home without any human contact for the day is fine as long as you get out there after work and/or the weekends.  In fact some people do better this way. 
   
   
   2. Wellness exams, vaccinations, mammograms, colonoscopies, and so on have saved many many lives.  The quantity and quality of life has improved dramatically over the last hundred years.  
   3. Advanced diagnostics -MRI, ultrasound, endoscopy and advanced treatments-tumor removal, chemotherapy, long term medications have improved quality and quantity of lives many times over.
   4. The costs to obtain medical degrees, malpractice insurance, medical equipment, and operating costs are huge.  The amount of time that goes into training to get into and staying in the medical field is enormous.  The toll on mental health is huge. It’s not a money maker, it’s a calling. 
   5. Medicine is a science.  Medicine and science evolve daily.  Spreading this information to massive amounts of people first was done by word of mouth, then  books and now the internet.  The information is only as good as the source. 


3. My reality:  Fur babies and pet parents are good:
   1.  House dogs and house cats have less exposure to parasites, trauma, and infections.  Their environment can be enriched just as ours can. 
   
   
   2. Preventative medicine can be as simple as food that prevents disease (dental diets, joint diets, urinary diets).  Labwork can diagnose disease early when treatment can be jus medicine, supplements, or food.  Waiting for symptoms lets disease progress where extreme measures are needed or even treatment is not possible. 
   3. As long as there are people and animals there is going to be the question of quantity versus quality of life. Each person, each family, each pet parent, each human parent, needs to make their own decisions.  With hospice care and pain medications available, fur babies are more comfortable than left on their own. 
   4. Yes corporations sell many useless items for fur babies such as clothes, ineffective supplements, fancy treats, food toppers, and pet strollers, etc. Just like useless items people buy for themselves, the majority of these items are not harmful and don’t cause suffering.  
   5. Yes, corporate Veterinary Medicine is designed to make money.  Due to less overhead they can charge less for vaccines, spays, neuters, and teeth cleans.  They serve to help folks that need to get services done for their pets within a budget and are fine with getting lower quality.