….. for the animals in our lives.

In yesterday’s post Senior Smiles there was a lovely exchange between Cindy and me. Cindy wrote:

Just a few days ago I relived in my mind the pain of losing our 16 year old Bichon- and that was a year and a half ago! Honestly, that is my biggest fear of adopting another dog- esp an older one.

Cindy then, mistakenly in my view, thought that, “it’s selfish to hang on to grief like this, and I REALLY don’t mean to“, to which I replied:

Grief is not a selfish attitude, far from it! You will know when it’s the right time to adopt, and love, a new dog.

You can then easily imagine my pleasure when thinking of what to write for today’s post to see a recent item over on the Care2 site about our commitment to our pets. About our love for our pets.

The item was called How Far Would You Go For Your Pet? and is republished here today. I would like to dedicate this post to Cindy! Cindy is the author of the blog: Mermaid in a Mudslide.

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How Far Would You Go for Your Pet?

By: TreeHugger. August 23, 2016

There is simply no denying the power that pets hold over us.

I suppose there are a number of reasons why we love our dogs and cats (and others) so much, but surely their innocence and unconditional love rank right up there on top. Plus they’re cute, and furry, and funny, and sweet, and overall good companions. But I have to think there is something about them providing access to the larger animal world in general as well – domesticated animals are like a bridge between us civilized humans and wildlife, and for this they serve an important role. If we can find compassion for our companion animals, in many cases that compassion seeps out and becomes extended to other elements of the natural world as well.

And we really, really have compassion for our pets. Like, approaching fervency. Last year Americans spent over $60 billion on their pets, a number expected to increase by another $2 billion this year. That. Is. So. Much. Money. If you spent $20 per second, it would take 95 years to spend $60 billion.

But even more telling than how much we spend on our pets is the other sacrifices we would make for them. With pets on their mind, the website Abodo conducted a survey of 2,000 dog and cat owners and asked them all kinds of bordering-on-Sophie’s-Choice type of questions. The following results display just how cuckoo we are for our creature cohabitants.

See more of the survey’s results here.

Written by Melissa Breyer, this post originally appeared on TreeHugger.

Photo Credit: dougwoods/Flickr

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The power of (unconditional) love!