Dog Daughters

Mental health issues

A friend of mine calls her dog her dogter. It's cute imo

Me neither. But I’m definitely the Daddy.

R2, how do you pronounce that? It just comes out as doctor. How would anyone even catch on to what she meant?

I know a single frau who is obsessed with Donny Osmond and has multiple cats. She calls them her "fur kids." One of them is actually named "Muffy," which sounds so cliche.

R4 Dogter (DAWG-tur) doesn't sound anything like doctor (DOCK-ter). What region are you from?

Yeah, the whole "furbaby" and calling yourself your pet's mom or dad is just nutty.

I love animals and my pets but....I'm not their parent.

We're buddies and pals and I might "baby" them occasionally but the overboard infantilization of pets is really out of control.

And, don't get me started on the people begging on social media and GoFundMe to raise $10k for experimental operations on 17 year old pets who are slowly dying of something and their deluded "parents" want to prolong the animal's suffering to squeeze 2 more pain filled month's life out of them.

R6, ‘dogter’ would absolutely sound like ‘doctor’ to most people unless the speaker slowed down enough to emphasize the hard G every time they uttered it.

What region are you from where everyone consistently emphasizes the C in ‘doctor’? To do that, you’d have to pronounce it almost as if it were two separate words: ‘DOCK-turr’. Most people kind of ‘bury’ the hard C sound so that it sounds closer to a G because it’s not usually uttered slooooowly enough to make it NOT sound like a G.

Okay, I dote on my pets, consider myself a dotty "animal person", as do all of my friends... but NONE of us ever have or ever will use language that implies a parent-child relationship with our pets! The relationship between a human and a pet is very different than that between parent and child, it contains far more pure love and far less dysfunction and disappointment.

I tell my cat "You are my cat and I am your human", but not when other humans can hear.

Dogter sounds like dog turd.

For some people, their pet is a substitute child.

In most cases, that’s a good thing. We don’t want more crazy people creating and spoiling actual human beings. I know a few people who are overbearing and hyper-focused on their pets. I feel sorry for the animals, but at the same time I think how much worse it would be for a human to be treated that way. My sister has a little white fluffball and she does this constant push-pull with her. The dog is a neurotic mess. If she’s not right next to my sister, begging for attention, my sister feels rejected and accuses the dog of “sulking” and “playing hard to get” and “being mad at her”. But when the dog is awake and begging for attention, it’s “someone’s clingy today” and “see how annoying she is?” and “this dog can’t let me take two steps away from her without whining”. She absolutely loves the dog, but she’s always AT her.

My dad definitely loves his dogs more than me. He's "Dad" and my stepmom is "Mum" when they talk to their huskies like children and project onto them human behaviors. And that is fine. I'm just happy they never had actual children.

My cat gets excited when I ask her “Who’s your Daddy?,” so I indulge her. Besides, I like the Father’s Day cards.

I get creeped out when people talk about me as my dog's "mom." I'm not a mom.