People vs. animals
Animals handle things so much better than people.
When life hits them hard, people whine. They get bitter, depressed, and anxious instead of looking for joy in life. Well, I think most people do. I know for sure I do. I'm working on it.
Animals just adapt. They go on.
My last "colorpoint" gerbil, Warrior, doesn't have much time left. He's showing signs of heart failure. In all my years of gerbil-keeping, I've never yet had that successfully treated. He is 3 years and 8 months tomorrow, which is a record for us. That is seriously old for a gerbil. Mercy would not be to force medication down his throat, thus stressing him out, and have him die anyway. So I am letting nature take its course for now. If nature is too slow, he'll have a last visit to the vet. Mercy is difficult and heart-wrenching.
Warrior is our last of a line of gerbils descended from the indomitable Trixie. Unlike Warrior, Trixie was an ordinary pet shop gerbil. Her fur was the ordinary "wild" color of gerbils in nature, brown with black tips, a gray undercoat, and a white belly. All designed for camouflage. I am not really an advocate of buying from pet stores. Much like puppy mills, commercial gerbil breeders are often unscrupulous. Pet stores are notorious for selling sick, pregnant, unsocialized gerbils.
Trixie was an exception. My husband fell in love with her at the pet shop, so we brought her home, risking bringing illness or mites to the rest of our gerbil population. Like I said, not recommended. But it worked out. Most gerbils, given the chance, are friendly, but she really stood out. Put your hand in her cage, and she was up your arm in a flash to poke her nose in your ear or nibble on your hair. Or climb on your head. She lived to play.
I think it was in her second year that we found her with paralyzed hindquarters. We never discovered what happened. The x-ray wasn't clear enough to tell if there was a growth on her spine or a break from a fall or something. What was clear was that she wasn't ready to give up on life. She ate, drank, tunneled through bedding using her front legs, chewed on cardboard, in short did everything she did before except run on a wheel and jump. So we delayed putting her to sleep. We modified her cage to be sure eating and drinking was easy, and she had plenty of toys that didn't require hind legs. She lived happily for over a year until one day she simply stopped ... everything. She let us know when she was ready to go.
How many of us, when faced with such a disaster, would still focus on enjoying life? As I watch my Warrior reach the end of his, I wonder how I would fare.
When life hits them hard, people whine. They get bitter, depressed, and anxious instead of looking for joy in life. Well, I think most people do. I know for sure I do. I'm working on it.
Animals just adapt. They go on.
My last "colorpoint" gerbil, Warrior, doesn't have much time left. He's showing signs of heart failure. In all my years of gerbil-keeping, I've never yet had that successfully treated. He is 3 years and 8 months tomorrow, which is a record for us. That is seriously old for a gerbil. Mercy would not be to force medication down his throat, thus stressing him out, and have him die anyway. So I am letting nature take its course for now. If nature is too slow, he'll have a last visit to the vet. Mercy is difficult and heart-wrenching.
Warrior is our last of a line of gerbils descended from the indomitable Trixie. Unlike Warrior, Trixie was an ordinary pet shop gerbil. Her fur was the ordinary "wild" color of gerbils in nature, brown with black tips, a gray undercoat, and a white belly. All designed for camouflage. I am not really an advocate of buying from pet stores. Much like puppy mills, commercial gerbil breeders are often unscrupulous. Pet stores are notorious for selling sick, pregnant, unsocialized gerbils.
Trixie was an exception. My husband fell in love with her at the pet shop, so we brought her home, risking bringing illness or mites to the rest of our gerbil population. Like I said, not recommended. But it worked out. Most gerbils, given the chance, are friendly, but she really stood out. Put your hand in her cage, and she was up your arm in a flash to poke her nose in your ear or nibble on your hair. Or climb on your head. She lived to play.
I think it was in her second year that we found her with paralyzed hindquarters. We never discovered what happened. The x-ray wasn't clear enough to tell if there was a growth on her spine or a break from a fall or something. What was clear was that she wasn't ready to give up on life. She ate, drank, tunneled through bedding using her front legs, chewed on cardboard, in short did everything she did before except run on a wheel and jump. So we delayed putting her to sleep. We modified her cage to be sure eating and drinking was easy, and she had plenty of toys that didn't require hind legs. She lived happily for over a year until one day she simply stopped ... everything. She let us know when she was ready to go.
How many of us, when faced with such a disaster, would still focus on enjoying life? As I watch my Warrior reach the end of his, I wonder how I would fare.