Not only semantics, but specious semantics! If you're talking about "guardianship" like non-parents are given to children, the children are still "owned" by said guardians. And as far as "balanced relationship", when my cat/dog/iguana/guppie starts paying its portion of my rent, then we can start talking about "balanced relationship" .....

I'm not discounting the absolute benefits of having a pet - I'm missing Chirp something fierce these days, and the only thing keeping me from replacing him is that, as I settle into my new digs, I'm realizing just how much of the way the old place was organized was due to the idiosyncrasies of my pet (for example, his leather fetish that kept me from leaving anything leather or leather like out in the open for him to pee on). Plus, I've got wall-to-wall-to-wall carpeting now - a vastly different thing to clean yakked-up hairballs off of.

Still, when I'm sitting home staring at the idiot-box, with the walls still echoing from the townhouse not being full enough, I do absolutely miss a purring something sitting next to me (or even better, on my chest). Of course, said purrer doesn't have to be a non-human ....