It's true. Even not having a puppy to train for a year or three and you forget what a pain in the ass they can be. But as they mature you have a friend forever. until they age quickly relative to people and die.

 You didn't have to get all emo about it. My dogs are young but my cat is old. Murdock is likely my last dog. I'll be in my 60s when he expires naturally.

Well as long as the emo floodgates are open...

The thing about dogs that trumps all else is that dogs will give you their unrequited love and loyalty. Sure they are clumsy goofs and they can smell doggy at times, but for dog people this is a very small price to pay for the palpable adoration that you receive from your pet dog. This all sounds very selfish and one-sided, but that brings up the other side of the issue: dogs love loving you. You absolutely make their day just by hanging out with them. If you have the time to invest in making a real best-friend-for-life, it's definitely worth it. There's a dog breed for everybody.

Very low-maintenance, the closest you can come to this kind of a relationship otherwise is with children/parents. Obviously I don't endorse it at all, but the fact is that any situation where you can do violence to something and it still continues to loves you is powerful magic. Similarly, even a terrifying level of neglect is usually not enough to easily make dogs lose their loyalty. As lame as Animal Planet is, I think it does a good job of highlighting the insane conditions dogs are willing to put up with for the privilege of protecting their master. Immediate relatives and dogs are about the only things that behave like this.

Below that, there's a touch of the same behavior in Cats/Spouses/Lovers. I mean Rihanna went back to Chris Brown, right? At the start of a relationship perhaps, or if you have little self-esteem, or if you're dealing with a cat, then you'll see the same fragile degree of love. This is pretty violable though. You push someone too much and they won't forgive you. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this either. I wouldn't really want a lover who was totally into me and couldn't be pushed over the edge by me being an asshole over and over again. The thing is this kind of love can fade without you even doing anything wrong. There's no guarantee of permanence here. Not like with dogs.

Dogs are loyal to their masters to the death.


PS - OK maybe I'm selling cats a little short. They can be neglected or hurt and they still keep coming around. The thing is I'm not so sure it's not just about food for most of them. They're selfish little bastards. If you offered companionship but not food, the cat would blow you off.

I mean Rihanna went back to Chris Brown, right?

i thought she took him to court..?

Maybe you're right. The Domestic Violence statistics where the battered woman goes back to her batterer are actually pretty staggering, though. I don't think that weakens my point.

We went to court once, as part of this mock trial comp we were doing, we had to take a case and pretend to be the lawyers, witnesses, blah blah.. and yeah.. On the morning there we got to sit in a few trials, one of them we were supposed to see was a case of domestic violence. The woman got all the way to court, but at last minute backed out. She probably just went back to him, trial had to be cancelled.

Apparently that happened a lot.

Are you going into Law like Carolyn?
Wait, you're in college, no?

I'm in Sixth Form, if I were in America I'd still be in high school I think.

This was something we did in school when we were like 12 or 13.

So this "Sakhi is 16" thing is not so much an exaggeration as the truth then, eh?

I always had dogs growing up. I still love dogs but I hate other peoples dogs now.
At least the ones that are allowed to roam the streets.

So this "Sakhi is 16" thing is not so much an exaggeration as the truth then, eh?

16 and a half now...!

That "half" counts ...
One and a HALF more years until we throw her to Kyle and/or Banal ...

It doesnt matter in Australia.
Furthermore, if you paid for my ticket I'd go there now!


...okay, i'd consider going there now.

Your parents ground you from your laptop ...
I don't see a trip in your future, especially paid for by someone online ...

This is reason #23 why we have to put up posters in grocery stores!

Pfft, i wouldn't tell them,
that is why i said I'd consider it.

You need to be 18 to get a passport... i think.

Maybe to get one on your own...

hahahaha..

So, under 18 year olds cant travel, eh?

With parental permission they can. travel and passort.

I know a girl at school who went to Pakistan on her own, for the summer.
I'm fairly certain she had no letter telling them she was allowed to go...

She might have only been able to get her passport with her parents' permission, though.

which brings us back to

Maybe to get one on your own...

I'm fairly certain no one would stop a 16 or 17 year old boarding a flight and leaving the country just because they're too young.

Whoever suggested such a thing?

So, under 18 year olds cant travel, eh?

With parental permission they can. travel and passort.

Unless I'm missing something..?
Which happens quite often. =|

I thought he was just saying that an under-18-year-old who didn't have a passport would be shit out of luck as far as travel was concerned without parental permission.
In other words travel is predicated on the possession of a passport whose ownership for minors is at the discretion of the parent.
Of course once the passport has been gained by the minor then I'd assume they're free to go wherever they want until it expires.

I assume most Europeans get a passport with parental approval before the age of 10, no? And aren't passports good for like 10 years? So that would pretty effectively moot the point right there.

Only if you ignore the rule different carriers have about 'unaccompanied minors'. and I can tell you right now, anybody under the age of 18 trying to get into australia usually ends up having to hang out in customs untill a parent is contacted. Even if the under 18 has a visa...the call still gets made. The exception is person having a letter that's stamped and stapled into passport...though I have still seen under 18s marched off to wait in a backroom who have all docs.


edit: 17 not 18. You wont even get on the plane in the uk to go anywhere if your under 17 and without the consent of parents.

So it was I who was missing something then, oops. Never mind, carry on.

Yeah ...

You wont even get on the plane in the uk to go anywhere if your under 17 and without the consent of parents.

Bullshit. I've been flying solo since I was about nine, including many trips from Antigua to Spain or vice versa. There is no direct flight to do this, so I'd have to fly from Antigua to London, then catch another flight to Barcelona. Flights to Barcelona worked out way cheaper if flying in and out of Luton, so usually I'd have to get from Gatwick or Heathrow to Luton, or vice versa, and Sakhi can attest to the fact that these airports aren't next door to each other. Often it would mean overnighting in London at my uncle's flat, which meant navigating the tube system from Victoria to the DLR station near his place, then back again the next morning. At no point did anyone ever stop me to check if I had parental consent to be travelling wherever I went. And before you ask, no, I wasn't flying UM. I did that once ended up being the last passenger off the plane, so never again.

im sorry if all the web pages i can find about it say otherwise.