Can I Abandon My Pet?

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Alright Tim, the question for today's episode is, Can I abandon my pet? Well apparently, according to some states, if you abandon your pet, you may get thrown in jail or get subject to a felony, so I guess it depends.

It depends. If you're asking like in view of the government, no, probably not, right?

I thought it was in most states if you, you know, according to like the laws of our current government, if you abandon your pet, then there's, you know, it ranges obviously, but typically in every state there's some form of punishment, whether it be like fines or actual prison time.

Imprisonment, yeah. So you posted a video of a man abandoning a, what was it, a

German shepherd? Yeah, a German shepherd. Abandoning a German shepherd, and I guess he's facing some kind of, you know, legal ramifications from doing that.

Which is really kind of dumb on his part, because I'm pretty sure German shepherds are really expensive. I bet he could have sold it.

Yeah, yeah. You know, he's facing prison time instead. Well, yeah, I mean, so from the perspective of the government right now, this is definitely considered a crime.

Because, I mean, the assumption that undergirds this is that animals are essentially viewed as family members, and so abandoning an animal is basically the equivalent, in the minds of the pagans, like it's the moral equivalent of abandoning, you know, a child or something like that.

So in that way... I don't know if it's the equivalent, man. It might be, like, higher on the list at this point than abandoning a child.

Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah, maybe it's worse. It would be worse. You'd get in worse trouble for abandoning an animal at this point than abandoning a human being.

But, yeah, if you're trying to answer the question, can, I mean, you can answer the question, can, as it relates to what the laws currently allow.

And this is, you know, note, special note, this podcast is not encouraging anyone to break the law for these reasons.

But, you know, so part of it is, is it legal? Currently, is it legal? But then if you ask the question behind the question is, you know, is this a moral issue?

So what does the Bible have to say about that? Yeah, is it, like, biblically, what is the answer, right?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think we asked this question online, and many people brought up, you know, the verse in Proverbs, where a righteous man cares even for his animals.

So he has regard even for his animals. And, you know, this is a puzzling passage to bring up as it relates to this kind of topic, because we, you know, as Christians, we're living in a world right now that basically is treating animals like humans.

And so most of our impulses are trained to think of pets as family members, even.

Right, yeah. So we may not believe that they're actually family members, but then our emotions are trained to think of them in exactly that way.

And so part of this discussion is just a discussion about human beings' responsibility to care for animals in general.

So this is an example I brought up online, and I didn't really get a whole lot of interaction on this, but then I am, you know, interested in thinking through these things without, you know, the filter of emotion with it in that way, and thinking about it just in terms of, you know, what does the

Bible say, and what is reasonable, and what is logically consistent, and everything else. But, I mean, you can imagine a situation where a man goes out into the wilderness or whatever, and he finds a horse.

And then he takes that horse, and he tames the horse. And then he decides to take the horse back, like ride the horse back to his, you know, after the process of him taming it and everything else, he rides this horse back, or he leads, you know, with a rope or whatever.

But he tames the horse, he begins to feed the horse, he even gives, like, the horse a name, okay? So, let's say that he's given this horse a name, and then he starts to feed this horse, and then he gets into a situation where, you know, it's just a stubborn horse that's constantly kicking him off his back, and everything else.

Would it be immoral for that man to take that horse back to where he found it, and let

God care for it, right? I mean, so that's sort of a question that you have to think through. Like, meaning, does a human being, once a human being begins to care for a particular animal and claim ownership of it and say that, this is my property, once he does that, is it like a

Wookiee life debt or something like that? Pete and Jared laugh That he's made, you know, he's like, once you become mine, you are mine indefinitely, and then

I have a responsibility to care for you indefinitely, you know, period, the end. The same way

I would a spouse or a child. A spouse or a child, yeah. And a lot of people, that's the way they think about pets in general.

And I mean, if you look at the laws in the books right now, I mean, this is true. You may get into criminal trouble if you abandon a dog, a cat, or even a rabbit.

A pet rabbit, you know, once it's considered a pet, it's like it's considered family. And if you were to abandon that family member, all the moral outrage is going to happen at that point.

But then you do have to ask, well, is this reasonable? Like, is this a reasonable thing for human beings to think this way about animals?

And then what are the preconditions that are necessary to go that direction in your mind, right?

So, I mean, it doesn't seem to me that if a man were to take that horse and say, this horse is going to be mine, and this horse is now my property,

I'm going to take it to my home, and I start to feed it. I mean, it's not true that once you start feeding it, like you've made some permanent commitment that you're going to care for it for the rest of your life.

But then this is the way people were arguing, right? So the people were arguing, a righteous man has regard even for his animals, right?

And it's like, well, what if he doesn't want it to be his animal anymore? That's the very thing that is under dispute, right?

Is there a means of a person saying, hey, I've taken on this responsibility to care for a particular animal.

This animal is no longer benefiting me. It's destructive to either my lifestyle, my family, my kids, whatever else.

Is there any way to abdicate that responsibility or what are the appropriate ways to abdicate that responsibility in that way?

And so we have a lot of expectations that our society puts upon us about what is reasonable in this way, but then you do have to take a step back and ask, well, are these expectations reasonable even at this point?

Or how do we get to where these expectations are reasonable? So one argument people would give was a righteous man has regard even for his animals.

Another argument that people gave was you have to let your yes be yes and your no be no. Yeah, yeah.

Which is a Bible verse. That is a Bible verse. It's clearly a Bible verse, but it assumes the

Wookiee life debt kind of concept that once you begin to care for a particular animal, you have made a fundamental commitment to care for them for the scope of their life in that way.

So part of it was that. And part of it was like, well, you need to count the cost, right? So the issue is if you say, hey, you decided to take on a pet, care for it, and then you go back on your word or something like that.

That was a failure of counting the cost. But it's like, yeah, I mean, but have you never bought a car before?

And it didn't work out? Like you drive that car for a little bit and you realize it's giving you back pain and back aches.

And it's a lemon. It has all sorts of problems that you can't keep up with. Like, is there any way to get rid of the car without sinning?

Can you say, hey, I just made a bad call on this one, right? Maybe it's just beyond my,

I didn't have any way of knowing it was going to break down every few weeks. Right? So part of it is like, there's just a property discussion in general.

And animals are certainly forms of property in this way. So then if you're thinking through what are the rules, the entailments of property in general, we don't typically think of ourself as having a responsibility to care for a particular piece of property the whole entire scope of our life, right?

So like if you were to go buy some land and you say, hey, this land is no longer pleasing to me.

I'm going to move. You could just kind of let it be. You don't necessarily even have to hand it off to someone.

You know what I mean? Like in terms of, the way it would actually work, pre -law and everything else.

I mean, there is like the idea of surrendering property, but then beyond that, then what you had was the emotional kind of arguments.

So then people would say, hey, if you abandon your dog in the middle of the woods or something like that, what if a bear eats it?

Yeah. Which is, I guess, that is a possibility. And I mean, because then you're subjecting it to cruelty, right?

Like a cruel death by getting eaten by a bear. And it's just like, but that really, you have to kind of step into that and you have to ask, like, have you guys never watched like National Geographic before or something like that?

Have you ever watched the Lion King? You know? Yeah. The Lion King.

Yeah. You know, what does he say? What does he say in there? I've forgotten. Something about like, hey, we grow old and we die.

And yeah, we eat the antelope and then we die. We become the grass and the antelope eat the grass.

It's the greatest. Yeah. So, I mean, like the idea that, I mean, so the idea there is kind of a bizarre idea.

I mean, it's like if you take a step back and you like remove the emotional, like human attachment you have to particular kinds of animals and you just think about it logically, it's just like, well, look, this animal, yeah, they may get eaten by wolves.

They may get eaten by a bear. It's like, well, yeah, those wolves and those bears, they have to eat too, right?

And God feeds them. How do you think that they get food to begin with? They're predators.

You think it's like Yogi Bear? He just goes and he steals the picnic basket every single time.

Well, I mean, that's where, yeah, I mean, that's where you've just left the realm of anything biblical at that point. It's like, well, what?

Do human beings have a responsibility to protect all herbivores from carnivores now? Like, what is going on?

Like, what are we signed up for? Yeah, I mean, there is like a circle. don't start giving them ideas,

Tom. Right? Don't start giving them ideas, please. Because it would be mean, you know? And so,

I mean, but then what that all kind of reduces to is that there is this emotional attachment that you have given to a particular animal that in a lot of ways is very inappropriate.

you know, so I don't feel like a lot of that is, a lot of those things are good answers.

Now, I mean, the one that's maybe slightly more compelling is the idea that, I mean,

I think cats generally survive. They're better suited to surviving in the wild than a dog might be.

So, you know, I think if you're thinking about like a biblical case, God feeds the birds of the air. And so,

I mean, I think God can figure out how to feed pets, too, in that way. But then if you have like a domesticated animal that you've bred that is utterly and completely helpless and dependent apart from human care, like a lot of dogs are said to be in that way.

You know, I don't particularly know. I've never like abandoned a dog out in the woods and put a video recorder on it and see how long it would survive or something before it gets eaten by a hawk or something.

But, you know, I mean, if it were to get eaten by a hawk, I would say, well, that's a victory, right? That's certainly a victory.

You enabled the circle of life to continue. Yeah. And then we didn't have to feed it anymore, you know, so that would be a good thing.

Like in my mind, that would be a win -win, you know, hawk, win for hawk, win for us, win for, you know,

God, God, God, God feeding the birds of the air, you know, win, win, win, win, win. What about the dog?

Well, I mean, you know, not everyone gets to win. Not everybody can win, huh? I mean, if it was a nicer dog, then we wouldn't have got rid of it anyways, you know?

So, so he got it. He got what was coming to him. Now, what about, you know, so in modern society, at least, we do have the option of like shelters or, you know, trying to find a different owner on your own.

What about someone coming along, making an argument, saying, hey, wouldn't it be better to, you know, try and put the dog in a situation where it's more likely to survive?

Yeah, I mean, I think so. I don't, so I'm a little bit sympathetic to the idea, hey, if you breed a domesticated animal, and they're utterly helpless and dependent apart from human care, then just kind of abandoning them in the middle of nowhere in order to starve, like one that could, like, that may not be the best kind of situation in general.

Just, I mean, causing needless, needless suffering, you know, in terms of just causing it to starve to death or something like that, like slow, kind of painful death, like maybe a bullet to the head would be a little bit better in that way.

But then the other thing is, yeah, well, hey, maybe if you abandon your pit bull and, you know, it's just roaming the woods, it could be a liability to other people in that way because it turns feral or whatever.

And so, I mean, I'm sympathetic to those kind of arguments in general. And, you know, I don't, but I think you do have to think about this, like in terms of objective principles that apply, like you don't want to have like a situation -based morality.

You have to think about how, what are the expectations that people throughout the history of the world would have expected related to this kind of topic?

You get what I'm saying? Yeah. So, you don't want like principles of ethics that only apply in our unique and particular situation right now.

So, I mean, I think a lot of this reduces to what is the best case scenario and what is the worst case scenario. But then part of the problem is that we so idolize animals that sometimes you back people in a corner to where, you know,

I mean, we've counseled a girl who functionally, I mean, she was in a pretty awful situation.

We won't go into great detail about that to just shelter the situation. But, I mean, essentially, she's a younger girl who is basically starving herself to death in order to feed the stupid cat that she has because she's in a situation where care for her is not going the way that it should in that way.

And, you know, so, like, there's a lot of people in COVID, like during COVID who were basically just strapped for cash, strapped for money, losing their jobs, out of work and everything else.

And a lot of people were trying to event like a lot of we're trying to bring their pets to shelters during that time.

And the shelters are full. They just stopped taking them. And so there's, you know, so, yeah, I mean, if you can bring it to an animal shelter, possibly rehome it,

I mean, they're going to kill it in a few weeks if no one comes to get it anyways. So, I mean, yeah, they're dead at that point, right?

I mean, they're going to be dead at that point. And so I think, yeah, that would be a better scenario.

I mean, it could be argued that possibly that's a better scenario on one access on one access, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Like, meaning like it would cause that particular animal less pain and suffering, right?

If you were to do that kind of thing, like put it out in a slow, painful death.

But then, I mean, you do have to think about the bears and the hawks and the wolves and everything else. I mean, you know, on another access, you deprive them an opportunity for a meal, too.

You know, so there's that. I mean, you do.

And what are they going to eat if they can't eat your poodle? If they can't, yeah. So, I mean, like that would, you know, advance

God's purposes, too, to, you know, send them out in the woods, helpless and defenseless, and, you know, give the predators an opportunity to do what they're designed to do and hunt something, you know, so that, like that's a fail on that end.

But then it would, yeah, I would certainly restrict some of this particular suffering for this one particular animal, for sure.

I mean, so I think, yeah, I think it would be better to shoot it. But then part of the problem is if you're living in a residential area, you can't just shoot your dog in the backyard or something like that.

Right. Without going to jail anyways. And so then, you know, you're left in a situation where you're going to have to, you know, drive out into the middle of nowhere somewhere and shoot this thing.

And like, hopefully no one sees you anyways, you know? So, I mean, like there's, there's a lot of situations like that, like, you know, with the girl we're talking about,

I don't think she would have had the stomach to shoot a dog or something like that. No. Someone's going to have to take, take on the animal for them, you know?

And so I think what's happening is you, you have a lot of people who are painted into a corner in this topic to where they take on this responsibility that our society says,

Hey, this is a lifelong, you know, life debt you're making to this animal, which is really irrational and really unreasonable.

Um, you know, like it's, it's not really a good thing to do anyways, say, Hey, this is going to be a part of my family and you're going to be a part of my family for life.

And like your life changes. You may have kids, you know, you may like have kids and realize that I don't like the way that dog's looking at my kid anymore.

Um, you know, so there's a lot of like circumstances that change and we're not like an animal centric, like religion here.

You know, it's not like the two great commands in the Bible or love dog, love the Lord, your God with all your heart and soul, mind and strength and love your dog as you love yourself or something like, it's just not like, like,

I mean, it's remarkable. It's like the whole Bible is written and the vet, it gets two great commands that summarize the whole

Bible or love God and love neighbor. And then we've added dogs in there as if they're like some kind of, you know,

Oh, people love their dogs more than they love their name. I promise you. I promise. Most people today don't even, at least in the

U S don't even know their neighbors. That's right. I mean, they're literal neighbors. They literally would, you know, greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his pet, like on Man of Steel or whatever, you know?

So that's where we're at. But I mean, so I think you can be backed into a corner where you're in like, like there's no good out here.

You know what I mean? Like there's no good out, like shelters aren't going to take the thing. No one wants it because everyone's broke, like in the pandemic and things like that.

It's like, what are you going to do? Like, you're just going to sit there and starve to death for the sake of this dog. You know, I think there, you know, if a person in that kind of situation were to say,

Hey, I'm done with it. I can't do this anymore. Maybe at least they have a hope of surviving.

If I drop them off somewhere, you know, maybe not, you know, maybe their food for the bears or something.

It's just like, well, I mean, that's, yeah. God's instituting the world in such a way that, you know, he cares for the birds there.

He feeds, he feeds for, he feeds animals too, but I don't know that any human being takes on like a unique obligation to care for a particular animal for life.

So I think it can be, I can, it can be a little messy, you know, and I think when you're living in a society like that, you can kind of, you can back people into certain corners to where there's no good way out.

And, and I would say that, yeah, that should caution people to think if you're living in that kind of society, maybe you should be, you shouldn't throw yourself into pet ownership, you know, because we have, you know, we now we're, we have so many breeders who are creating so many animals to meet like this huge demand that, that,

I mean, it's probably not like a wise, I mean, it's obviously it doesn't reflect very wisely on us as a society in general, for sure.

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