My dog has started to audibly sigh when I stop on our walk to photograph things. It’s as if he knows he’s just there as an excuse for me to be loitering in the woods.
I’m not a cat person. I think they’re amazing animals but the downsides of them as pets is just too much for me.
I used to love keeping fish. A well kept, natural-looking fish tank is the pinnacle of cool pet to me but it was so much work that the enjoyment went out of it as I got older. I used to have catfish though if that counts at all?
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I love this beyond measure.
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I’ve always considered it a mutually beneficial partnership. Every dog in my life has made me a better person. I like to think their lives have also been better for it. Unfortunately in English there isn’t an easy way to express that. Certainly when it comes down to legal responsibilities I still bear the burden of being ‘owner’ and my dog the burden of being ‘property’.
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They can smell nerd-dom 
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Yeah i get what they were trying to say its def not legal but I also know in Alabama very few will take on rabbits. And to be fair most will NOT survive what you described. Theyre quite prone to heart attacks after the fact, which kills them if they arent already in distress or dead, on top of which if its before eyes open very hard to hand feed baby buns. I raised domestic rabbits for 20 years and even with 20 years of experience bottle babies are rareeee. Why we would breed more than one at a time to have fosters. And i totally get why youd just try yourself in that situation, no one is gonna come after you for it. Just know that even though somehow you pulled it through, the stats were super against you so dont think the rehabber was just being lazy or overwhelmed or whatever. It was a hopeless case and they were very right to prepare you for that outcome; you got super de duperty lucky!!
Partnership, or perhaps caretaker?
Legally i am glad I own, and no one can just decide take my dog. But there is a reason we call them our partners in the working and sport worlds :) we work together to do what we do, as a team :)
This is like one of my biggest pet peeves!!! Follow the rules so everyone can be happy. Lots of dogs hate strange dogs and not all people love your goober either! Public trails have rules so everyone can be happy and enjoy. Even I keep mine leashed when out for hikes despite having legal lenicies due to our work! Ugh. Whenever my students ask me or if i overhear one talking about doing this I explain that and ad:: “if you think you and your dog are above the law because you are that well trained then you still need to keep a tab leash on them for quick grab and have a reg leash with you. The instant you spot anyone else your dog needs to be back in heel, tab leash in your hand showing you have physical control over your dog. Walk past the people with the leash in your hand until they are out of sight. Now imagine that person has a reactive dog - who has every right to be on the trail as well and enjoy themselves - and your on a tight blind curve. Your dog is in front already on or past the curve and sees them before you do, and their dog seeing a strange off leash dog no person in sight starts to bark or growl at your dog. Are you 100% certain that your dog would ignore them never approach them and come back to you immediately? What about If your dog sees a squirrel or deer, would they chase it, or recall to you? What if you dont see the fawn at all and your dog spooks it up, would it chase or would it have an automatic leave it that doesnt need cued by you?” Usually they are dropping their chin into a frown by now!!! “i can see you are not confident beyond shadow of doubt. Your dog is not allowed off leash when there is leash law. Ever. No questions. No amount of training can account for every scenario and you have no right taking other peoples or animals safety away from them.”
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You know you’re seriously into iNat when:
… your dog sighs at you for stopping and making observations
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The “love” was for your second picture, at the window on a rainy day.
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true, 
Mine too. Now, they just sigh and sit down to wait. Or lie down, put their heads on their paws and stare pitifully up at me.
Not that it makes me stop photographing or even move more quickly, no matter how pitiful they look. At this point, I think they are resigned to their fate.
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Thank you for understanding about the rabbit. I searched all over for the nest as my best option but couldn’t find it. Then tried rehabbers within 200 miles of us. Finally just had to buckle down and try it. The dogs were in our fenced yard, but the yard is about 2 acres with some wild spots. I have no idea to this day where that rabbit really came from. It may have even been dropped by some raptor or other predator and the dog found it. I just don’t know. And I really was lucky it survived.
This is embarrassing but I cried like a baby when I released it just outside the yard area in a wilder area where there was plenty of cover and forage. It was still so small and I was sure it would be something’s dinner. But for months after I occassionally caught glimpses of first a very young rabbit and then an adult so although I don’t know for sure, I told myself that it survived maybe at least long enough to reproduce. Maybe.
Anyway I did my best considering that situation and frankly I hope never to have to do it again. I hate crying.
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Do you mean the environmental downsides or something else?
Yeah, dogs are partners, especially if you have a Chessie like we do (somehow we’ve drifted into having very independent breeds like Chessies, Jack Russells, etc) Right now, we have a Chessie, a Jack Russell (a rescue dog) and a “Heinz-57” rescue. They deign to live with us and occassionally even do what we ask if we plead with them firmly enough. But I appreciate their independence and decision making abilities so I gues that’s why we ended up with so many hard-headed dogs.
It was the JR that brought me the baby rabbit a few years ago and during hurricane Ian she brought me a kitten from who knows where. (People abandon pets on our driveway because they think it’s just an old farm road.) Thankfully I had a friend willing to take the kitten because her cat had recently died so it turned out okay.
Anyway what I meant to say was: partner sounds about right to me for folks who have dogs living with them.
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Partly environmental. I’ve been trying to make my garden as wildlife friendly as possible but I’ve had problems with cats. The lizard population was wiped out for about 10 years thanks to one cat and my vegetable garden ends up getting used as a cat toilet if I’m not careful. I know you can keep cats indoors or enclosed and that’s fine with some of them but it seems hard to give some of them sufficient stimulation as indoor cats. I don’t really want a pet that walks over kitchen surfaces or scratches up the house and knocks things over either. I’ve got children to take care of all those jobs. 
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Cats live fine indoors, never had any problems with them like that, they will sleep through most of the day as adults anyway. Cats are much easier to take care of than dogs.
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Surely people who are caregivers of cats are doing the environment some good? especially, people who adopt them from rescue shelters, of course, you have to be well informed in taking care of these pets and keeping them stimulated by training them to walk on a leash, or putting a bell on their collar and keeping them from going outside at certain times? Some of them as @fffffffff stated are totally fine indoors and are happy with the toys and time you give them. I think regarding the environment, cats don’t affect it more than a dog does with the proper care. In my opinion, dogs are more demanding.
So I think your decision is more personal as you mentioned you have kids who are enough work, and of course, to each is their own.
P.S: Love your profile picture
Many a hike has been spoiled for us by unleashed dogs who surprise us (ie run at us at full speed) or jump on us while we are geared up. We have PTSD and lose our s*it. We want equal access to the trail that says pets must be leased. And we desperately need that intentional relaxing time in nature. Please leash them 
. As our best iNat buddy always says, “i’m not mad at the dog. it’s not the dog’s job to know and follow the leash laws.”
We are scared of pets and don’t want to have them right now. We dog sat 2 French bulldogs a few times many years ago and felt so guilty leaving them locked up all day as directed that we played hooky from work to let them roam free in the house all day. So that’s about us, not the suitability of animals as companions. Now that we’re mostly homebody, we may someday consider a legit therapy animal but for now it’s cost prohibitive for us to acquire (even when subsidized) and properly care for
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I like dogs and I don’t want strange ones running up to me on trail. We have been pinned down on the trail by a charging growling dog and no owner in sight, and eventually my friend heard someone calling for their dog who ran off. It was a scary 5 minutes that felt like 30 minutes. We kept it away from us with hiking poles. The owners of these dogs are never apologetic even, and usually don’t even leash their dog when they finally catch it. I’ve started to record them and post them to the organisation that manages most the trail network here.
They finally (the org) put up some new signs. The dogs on leash was always on the info board. But they added new large signs at most trail heads last summer with a drawing of a leashed dog being walked by a person, and the sign says (paraphrase as I forget exact word) “All dogs must be leashed, even cute well trained ones.” I have noticed much better leashing jobs since those signs, because they clearly noped how people think of their own dogs being above the rule.For some reason, specifying that seems to really have helped, I rarely see unleashed dogs anymore when over half them used to be.
I also spoke with their social media person, because the org themself was sharing videos & photos sometimes that showed off leash dogs. I said they must make sure everything they share to social media shows correct land stewardship and rule following, or they cannot expect others to care or follow rules when they promote on their own page breaking the rules (sometimes even - it was their own trail teams in uniform with off leash dogs!). They agreed with me right away; and lots of it got removed and I have not seen more of that since. I think that also helped. And instead every few months they share a Dog Tips type post as well, showcaseing good ways to hike with dogs.
A combo of that type of signage, and reaching out to the social media people from whoever runs the trails near you, I think would really help as it did around here.
Edit: found a photo of the sign that really seemed to help around here! Off leash dogs running amock used to be a problem but not after these signs were prominently placed
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I wholeheartedly agree, there is been a time when I was peering through my binoculars at a blue tit, then suddenly I heard barking beneath me and I was be face to face with a huge mastiff without an owner, it’s enough to stop your heart!
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I wonder if naturalists are more likely to have non-dog-or-cat pets than average too? My pigeon and rabbit (link for photos!) were both found outside by other people and brought to me because they ‘knew I liked animals’ and figured I’d know what to do with them. I’m definitely more of a cat person than a dog person, but ‘cooler’ pets just keep finding their way to me! I definitely agree with what others are saying, that dogs are more demanding, and since naturalists are more likely to enjoy leaving their home for several days at a time, cats may be the wiser choice for most of us.
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Recently got barked-on by two alabay-like shepherd dogs, they truly though I was interested in their sheep, made my best effort to ignore them and go my way, of course the real shepherd shouted on them, but they didn’t stop long enough, I didn’t think they really would attack me, but those are huge dogs. Not their fault though, we just happened to cross roads.
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