it's not a joke, I know a family whose son suffered a head injury and their lives went from normal to very difficult in a matter of hours. The husband couldn't handle it and left, so the wife had to quit her job as a lawyer and became a full time carer. People do abandon their children in that situation because they're too selfish and broken to care for them properly. It takes a special kind of human to care for another human who is completely dependent and will never grow past that.
So not wanting to take that on with a dog is a kind of self protection. You never know what life is going to bring. Knowing that I'm not a particularly caring person (and by that I mean, capable of hands-on care, full time, for months or years at a time) I just have a niggle about getting a dog.
I feel like that's the sensible, responsible thing to do - make a brutally honest self-assessment. No dog wants to be neglected in their time of need. Maybe I'm just not cut out for dog ownership and should leave it to others, for the sake of all dogs.
Of course, as our blunt Italian friend put it, there is always the 'green dream' when things start going wrong. He was not going to pay for any surgery or treatment for any of their pets. When things started failing he was just going to take them into the vet and give them the green dream.
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