You may want to be around a pet, but are you ready to be a pet owner?
You may want to be around a pet, but are you ready to be a pet owner?
Parents, make sure your child and new pet are prepared for each other
A.M. That was the name of my goldfish as a kid. “A.M.” stood for “all mine.” To this day, I’m not sure why I decided to ask for fish as pets. I didn’t enjoy zoos and thought aquariums were overrated. I despised circuses. All three just seemed like wildlife jail to me. (To no one’s surprise in my family, it was very easy for me to become a vegetarian and then a vegan.) I didn’t get the entertainment value in taking something out of its natural habitat.
But I’m guessing my childhood brain thought that if I could have something as small as fish, maybe I would understand why people were into the idea of caging or separating wildlife. That backfired almost immediately. First, I never wanted to touch the fish and would jump when I had to get the fish into the net to wash the tank. Second, I would wait for the tank to smell before I washed it. (Although Chewy gives a thumbs up on cleaning the tank with fish inside, I definitely was not told this as a kid. I would’ve been too nervous that the fish would brush my hand anyway.)
“It’s better to leave [fish] in, because moving them will stress them out at best and could even injure them at worst.” -Chewy
So I would turn the tank sideways and pray silently that the fish would aim toward the bucket and not on my desk or table. Luck — and good aim — was on my side majority of the time.
And because I knew beach and pool water was cold, I would run cold water for a long time to make sure it was that cold too. Then, I would pour my fish inside. I’d carefully clean the tank and put my goldfish back in equally cold water.
The optimum temperature for fancy goldfish is 68° to 74° F … rapid changes in temperature or water chemistry can be harmful, if not fatal, to goldfish. -Aqueon
I wondered if something was wrong the first time I cleaned the tank, specifically when the goldfish raced inside of the rocks and just stayed there the entire day — hiding. The next day, when the water (probably) wasn’t as cold, the goldfish came out of the rocks. A few weeks later, I was right back at it, putting that fish in super cold water. This time, I didn’t see the goldfish at all. I kept peering in the rocks. Finally, I opened the tank. The fish was not only dead, but it had burst apart.
A sudden increase … can cause stress and even death in Goldfish, so we want to try and keep the temperature as stable as possible. -Tanks and Tantrums
I was done. I never got another fish again nor would I do so now. Afterward, I talked to my parents about water temperature for fish, and they were surprised to find out how long I was running the water to make sure it was at its coldest. I never asked them about tank temperature, and they clearly assumed I knew. And this is one of the worst things that parents can assume their children know about pets: that they automatically know how to bond with an animal — even if they beg and cheer to get it. This is even more apparent with dogs.
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Animal and children relationship status: It’s complicated
I was not prepared to have a pet, but I wanted one. And while it takes time for children and pets to adjust to each other, sometimes adult pet owners don’t know what they’re doing either!
I thought about A.M. recently after reading the story of the lady in Toronto, who let her off-leash dog into a playground area. When a father arrived with his child, the dog attacked, bit and dragged this kid. The middle-aged woman (5’10, husky build, dark hair in a ponytail) fled with her dog while the child was taken to a hospital.
In another incident, a dog owner (male, white hat, glasses) didn’t even try to control his dog. An Alaskan Husky owner fled the scene after his dog attacked and bit a 9-year-old boy, who was hanging out at a dog park.
Although I have never seen children at any neighborhood dog parks by me, I’ve definitely seen dog owners let their dogs run in empty children’s playgrounds and just stood guard by the gate. I’m sure kids look at that as double the fun: dogs plus playground. And I know this to be true by the number of random kids who have run full speed toward my own dog who is nowhere near a children’s playground, only to be met with immediate growls and her darting away from them.