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K4 Ideas a A 2 4 2 0 1 9 Few issues are more fraught than relationships with their pets. We say part of the family. We sleep with them ev- ery night and post their adorable faces on Instagram, sometimes more than our own human chil- dren. But unlike people, pets understand the consequences if they fail to uphold their end of the relationship. what makes it so difficult when they disappoint (or attack or destroy property or scare our neighbors).

Yet we do evict them, very quietly. According to the ASPCA, nearly 6.5 million companion animals enter the US shelter system each year, most of- ten for behavior-related problems. Of those, 1.5 million will be eutha- nized. To break up with Johnnie, Slade filled out a four-page form of yes or no questions about his behavior. Did he do this? Did he do that? Yes, yes, yes.

When she handed the form back to the shelter official, she braced herself for the It come. per- son at the counter looks at all my yeses and said, you kept him for that One might ask, if pets are our family members, surrogate chil- dren, best friends, then how could we ever consider them? But after hearing the story of Johnnie, the very bad cat, I wanted an answer to a different question: Are we obligated to keep our pets even when they make us miserable? HAT EVEN up for debate 50 years ago. Back then, as much as we liked having Lassie around to keep our kids from getting stuck in aban- doned mines, we hardly hesitated to dispose of her when she became inconvenient. Stranger, my hus- dog, used to rush to the front door to vomit on the doormat every time someone knocked. Stranger was also ner- vous around kids.

With two small children in the house and a third my husband on the way, his par- ents decided to give Stranger up to a shelter. No one questioned their decision. Bernard Rollins, the animal rights philosopher, wrote that he knew people in the 1960s who eu- thanized their family dog before going on holiday, reasoning that it was cheaper to just a get a new dog when they got back than board their pet. also worth noting that through the 1970s, an esti- mated 90 percent of animals that entered the shelters were eutha- nized. Attitudes shifted dramatically in the 1980s when pets began showing up in advertising; TV shows and movies featured anthro- pomorphised animals (remember and animal rights, along with messages about responsible pet ownership, became part of the national conversation.

Now our so- cial media feeds are full of good doggos and puppers, cute kit- tehs and cattos. We spent an esti- mated $72.13 billion on pets in 2018 alone, according to the Amer- ican Pet Products Association, a figure that grows at least 4 percent each year. Modern pet-person relation- ships can, and usually do, go very deep, says Dr. Hal Herzog, a psy- chologist at Western Carolina Uni- versity and one of the founders of the field of anthrozoology, the study of human-animal relation- ships. According to a 2008 Pew Re- search survey, 85 percent of dog BAD PETS Continued fromPageK1 owners and 78 percent of cat own- ers say their pet is part of the fami- ly.

They are our proxies, our surro- gate children, our projects. But sometimes our proj- stress everything else to the point of jeopardizing domestic har- mony. In 2010 book, We Love, Some We Hate, Some We he writes about a couple whose pair of high-maintenance Shiba Inus made them miserable. They paid a dog walker $300 per month just to get a few hours of peace. They have friends over because the dogs barked con- stantly and tried to steal food off the table.

And yet, the couple were genuinely attached to their dogs they talked about getting rid of them, but just stuck with those dogs through thick and thin. It wrecked their social life, it wrecked their house, it was a factor in the disso- lution of their Herzog told me. This couple also have children; the dogs filled that role. if you think of your dog as your kid, you get rid of your said Herzog. I NDEED, AS A putative exten- sion of our personal identities and our best selves, the mod- ern pet and our relationship to it suggests that entering new, as yet uncharted territory, and a lot at stake to get it right.

When we adopt or buy a com- panion, we are primed to under- stand that making a commit- ment, says Herzog. Kind of like a marriage. (Possibly too much like a marriage 38 percent of dog own- ers surveyed last year say the they show the most love and affection to in their house is the dog; only 23 percent named their significant other.) But given the novelty of this pet-human relation- ship, we yet know exactly what that means. Then again, unlike our pets, we can separate from other humans if their behavior becomes violent or objectionable or we find that we have irreconcilable differences. We can ghost.

We can divorce. We can get restraining orders. We can freeze out people in our lives. If we have enough money, we can banish recalcitrant teens to boarding school and college. But companion animals simply go their own way.

We talk it out to get both sides. They explain their behavior (as much as Slade would love to hear thoughts about peeing on her down duvet). un- friend a notes Herzog. And given the potentially life- or-death decision in surrendering a pet, pet breakups are highly charged. We all know people, my parents included, who have gone to great lengths to accommodate their pets because they want to fail their animals or sentence them to death, due to an animal- human misunderstanding.

father spends all day playing sical with his three pit bull mixes because one is so that she be in the same room with the others without the fur fly- ing. a big commitment; shuffling canines became his full- time avocation in retirement. So a lot at stake in these relationships: life, death, love, dis- appointment, and a shot at re- demption. The Shiba Inu owners give up their dogs, even after the canines broke up their mar- riage. Herzog, in contrast, actually had to put one of his down.

Adopt- ed from a local shelter as a puppy, she looked like Benji and was clev- er and loving some of the time. But, he says, turned out to have a real serious mean She their older dog and bit everyone in the family at least once. talking about bites that When she bit a visitor, Herzog turned to some of the best dog trainers in the country for advice, but no amount of work could keep the dog from snapping. Finally, his vet suggested that it was time to consider euthanizing her. was one of the hardest decisions I ever made.

I was in tears that dog was pretty special and I liked her a lot, but she was Put- ting her down was difficult, but al- so a relief she hurt any- one anymore. decision was made somewhat easier by the support he got from their vet. A lot of the guilt comes from what other people including ani- mal professionals think we should do with a problem pet. Re- member Johnnie? was tre- mendous judgment among friends and family. There was an expecta- tion that I would do all these things to accommodate the ani- recalled Slade.

talking to the behaviorist, I was trying to figure out: Are they trying to help me adjust to this animal as he was, or were they trying to make the an- imal more comfortable with me? What problem were they trying to solve? When they got to the shower curtain part, I realized the entire conversation was about convincing me to surrender my needs and live with the worst TILL, ANIMAL BEHAVIOR- ISTS argue that we should spend more time trying to understand problematic pets. The more we know about animal cog- nition and emotion, they say, the more we owe it to our animals to use that knowledge to help them. And an entire industry has ap- peared to demonstrate how best to do that. Jackson Galaxy, host of the pop- ular Animal Planet reality show, My Cat From Hell, visits the homes of people who are struggling with their felines. He keeps his arsenal of cat toys and treats in a custom guitar case.

The people on show, who usually refer to them- selves as the or of their cats, tearfully display their cat-scratched hands and legs and talk about their destroyed houses and social lives and relationships. They are desperate to not fail their animal, so they do their build cat agility courses in their spare rooms, and learn how to speak feline. Usually, it works. show is part of the nar- rative that emerged in the early part of the 2000s, along with shows like Dog Whisperer with Cesar Me or the or Behaving that no animal is beyond redemp- tion. Galaxy wants to help humans learn to have a with their cats.

relationships you engage in real emotional dialogue. about he says. Meanwhile, scientific research is demonstrating that animals, just like people, can suffer from mental illness, sometimes in response to the demands we put on them. Lux was the poster child for feline men- tal illness and most fa- mous client. The cat made interna- tional headlines after his Portland, Oregon, owners called 911 on him.

Lux scratched their 7-month-old baby; the father grabbed the baby and kicked at the cat. Lux charged him. The parents, baby, and their small dog ended up holed up in their bedroom, Lux hissing, growling, and charging the door. First-responders caught Lux with a snare and bundled him into a carrier, but the owners stopped at letting the officers take him to a shelter. Not long after, they ended up on My Cat From Hell.

Lux had a history of sudden, unpredictable aggression, unlike anything Galaxy had heard be- fore. did everything we went to neurologists, trying to find out where things were mis- firing, because his behavior was so off the he said. They tried medication, therapy, acu- puncture, but, said Galaxy, touch what was going on with Lux was the cat who convinced Galaxy that illness is for sure a he says. would we think otherwise? seen un- believable Enter pharmaceuticals for pets: seen incredible turn-around, what people would consider mira- cles because alleviated the suffering Gal- axy says. According to one 2017 survey, nearly 8 percent of dog owners and 6 percent of cat own- ers gave their pet medication for anxiety, at a cost of around $8.6 billion a year.

Galaxy and others worry that we could reach a place where throwing drugs at animals who are mentally ill to try to make them fit in our But, he said, medication needs to be part of the conversation when possible that it can relieve an suf- fering. IME-CONSUMING BEHAV- IOR modification, costly meds, a succession of new litter boxes, broken marriages, days spent playing musical dogs: Should we give up pets that make us miserable? Are we making our pets miserable? It says a lot about where we are now that many eviction stories have happy endings. Galaxy decided that Lux safe around the family, and found him a home with fos- ter carers. They loved him, Gal- axy said, but his violent out- bursts landed one of them in the hospital. Lux ultimately ended up at an undisclosed animal sanctuary where he is allowed to live with his violent tendencies, but where he hurt anyone.

Even bad boy Johnnie made it through: A few months after Slade dropped him off at the shelter, officials told her been readopted and was happy in his forever home as the top, and only, cat. But where we go next is unclear. We blame people for giving up on a pet, especially when we have the scaffolding in place to help them. And yet equally, if we say that animals are important to us, that our family, and sci- ence demonstrates that they are capable of complex cognitive abili- ties and emotional states, then re- linquishing them, knowing that it might kill them, is morally prob- lematic. The more we learn about ani- mals the more we force them in- to roles of friend, family member, surrogate child the murkier be- come our obligations to them.

Maybe the solution is not keep pets at all. not what Herzog is suggesting, but it is something worth considering, he says. paradox is that the more we think of as autonomous beings that have emotions and wants, the less right we have to keep them as a Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, a frequent Ideas contributor, is an American freelance writer living in London. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed there existed a tionship between Iraq and al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the dangers to our country and the world will be over- Bush solemnly declared from the Oval Office on the eve of invasion. Those dangers did not exist.

Iraq had no weapons of mass murder. It had no links to the terrorist group responsible for the attacks of September 11th; and the US faced no grave danger from Iraq. But just as the Bush Admin- istration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, it underplayed the ultimate costs of the decision to go to war. Days after the invasion of WAR Continued fromPageK1 Iraq had begun, and after months of purposeful opacity about the estimated price tag for the conflict, President George W. Bush presented Con- gress with a request for $75 bil- lion to pay for military opera- tions and postwar reconstruc- tion.

Ultimately, the United States would end up spending approximately $819 billion in direct costs on the invasion, oc- cupation, and reconstruction of Iraq. The collective direct and indirect costs of the entire glob- al war on terror was even high- er close to $6 trillion. And the meter continues to run. More than 2.7 million ac- tive-duty, National Guard, and reserve troops served in Af- ghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2017 and more than half were deployed more than once. These multiple deploy- ments significantly increased the number of troops suffering from combat-related trauma.

In fact, the average wounded veteran from Iraq and Afghani- stan has an astounding 7.3 rec- ognized disabilities. Already, the annual disabili- ty compensation given to vets of the war on terrorism is $15 billion. These payments will rise exponentially over the next several decades. So too will the cost of the military health programs and the finan- cial burdens on the Veterans Administration. While $3.3 billion was spent in 2012 for veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress dis- order, demand will increase be- cause this malady can go undi- agnosed for years, with symp- toms manifesting themselves decades later.

Then, there is the cost of death. The families of service members killed on active duty or from service-related injuries and those receiving VA disabili- ty benefits at the time of death are eligible for pensions of at least $1,200 a month. As of a few years ago, more than 80 dependents were still receiving benefits connected to the Spanish-American War, which ended in 1898. In 2017, the Veterans Administration was still paying benefits to Irene Triplett, the 87-year-old daughter of a Civil War veteran. There are the indirect costs, too.

At least one-third of the federal debt accrued after 2003 is directly attributable to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghani- stan. But another number to consider: $97 million. the amount of money that Con- gress appropriated in 2002 to defray the costs for airlines to replace flimsy cockpit doors and simple latches with hard- ened, bulletproof doors. That simple change almost certainly did more to stop an- other attack than anything done by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. So too did the post-Septem- ber 11th requirement that US intelligence agencies share in- formation with each other.

Had the CIA informed the FBI about the presence of al Qaeda terror- ists in the United States before the attack could possibly have been prevented. The US military did, howev- er, play one critically important counter-terrorism role. In the fall of 2001, US planes and a smattering of CIA operatives on the ground in Afghanistan helped rebel Afghan forces rout the ruling Taliban leadership in Kabul. Al Qaeda terrorists, in- cluding the leader, Osa- ma bin Laden, escaped into Pakistan. However, this was a spent force, unable to mount major attacks on US soil.

The US war on terror should have largely ended then. The threat from international jihad- ist terrorism had not been fully eradicated, but it had been re- duced to a nuisance; a political act depraved and sinister, but one that year-to-year kills fewer Americans than lightning strikes. But the larger story of Amer- misguided war on terror is what could have been. A fraction of the $817 bil- lion spent on fighting phantom threats in Iraq could have pro- vided every American with health care coverage. Doing so would have prevented 17,000 premature deaths annually.

A third of the nearly $4 tril- lion spent in fighting the war on terrorism could have brought US infrastructure up to what the American Society of Civil Engineers, in 2001, con- sidered an Instead the quality of US infra- structure would, in the years.