See what I did with p’s there?
I have heard of Pastors who miss Sunday services because their pet died.
Have ‘we’ gone overboard on treating pets like de facto children?
... .our lives become unbalanced and even bizzare when we boost the betterment of beasts above that of mankind..... or become bereaved beyond our own best interest at a beast;s demise..... ...such things are what causes followers of PETA .. even among my own friends... to berate me for being an avid bowhunter.... ..which i don;t apologize to them for.. .. i don;t even apoligize to them for being a fan of spanish style bull fighting... which upsets them even more.... 
Nobody would want them to leave a dead animal in their home. There is always someplace to put something like that...unless you live in an apt.
You can't go to a grocery store without seeing "cage free eggs" anymore. Best Foods mayonnaise puts "made with cage free eggs" on their labels. This irks me to no end. What does it say about our society when people care more for a bunch of chickens than they do pre-born human babies?i did see what you did there..... and i can totally appreciate the poetry of placing pets in their proper perspective... as should be done with all things in life......
i know what you mean about the concern for animals today being greater than concern for people.... and it irks me too.... in fact... . there is a common mantra among the PETA indoctrinated that goes... "it bothers me more to see animals suffer than it does to see people suffer".. ...my liberal friends spouted that off at me so many times in attempts to object to my bowhunting that i finally started finishing it for them.... then i would tell them i mostly hunt the svelts... (young smaller female pigs not yet of breeding age)... and that i placed my shots very well so they died quickly.... they finally stopped saying it....
) 
.. ...but the fact of the matter is allowing chickens to run free in a true "range" setting only makes them more susceptible to parasites, ..and it;s why very few producers of chickens for human consumption raise them that way.... much less advertise it..
... ..they didn;t do that all the time though.... only during time of the year when the demand for eggs was higher.... even chickens need to rest once in a while... 
Absolutely we have.See what I did with p’s there?
I have heard of Pastors who miss Sunday services because their pet died.
Have ‘we’ gone overboard on treating pets like de facto children?
, he's 12 years old and starting to show signs of his age and everybody in our family knows it's going to be a hard one when he goes.
I do not doubt the death of a beloved pet can be counted a ‘crisis’. But it’s hardly a reason to stay away from your responsibilities especially if you’re a vocational pastor. And there are other options besides a body left in your house.
)... outside where they belong....
It was a serious post because I have been somewhat bothered by the way we, in my opinion, have been influenced by the extreme animal rights movement. I do understand that many do love their pets…many older people especially. However we need perspective.Okay, I wondered whether this was a serious thread or not at first, and responded accordingly early on, but since it is being given serious consideration I will weigh in with a more serious answer. My family are dog people, not cat people. The dog that I received as a puppy when I was only about 4 years old looms large in my memory, as often as the case when a dog grows up with a kid. Since that time I have had many dogs and liked plenty of them but never got overly attached. That was until an ankle biting Yorkie mix showed up in our back door on Thanksgiving years ago. My wife fed it and the rest was history. I always had a great contempt for small anklebiting house dogs, yet we lived in a peaceful coexistence for the first couple of years, mainly because my small ALAYBOY was so in love with him. He had that Napoleon complex going on and was very curmudgeonly. He grew up with my boy. During the pandemic I was still working for almost a year and a half he grew close to me in a way that's hard to explain. To make a long story short, which is too late now
Having said all of that, I can see in a situation where you discover an illness that appears all of the sudden on Sunday morning before church and that requires emergency treatment, but barring some scenario like that, if we are just talking about a pet dying the day before or the morning of church, we would place him in a dignified location and as soon as we return from church we would make provisions to take care of his burial and/or remains. No need to disrupt worship of the Lord for those kinds of appointments. And that doesn't take away from what would definitely be a deep and profound sorrow for the circumstances of our family's loss.
I totally know what you mean. With our older shih tzu, we left him with his beans too long and it became turf warfare between me and him. Even after we "fixed" him, he still sported an attitude; if it came time to make him go to his room, especially if guests were around, the fight was on. He knew exactly when to play his stubborn card. The other one was nothing but a big chicken; practically going into a panic attack whenever we took him somewhere in the car. As much as those two got on my nerves, I miss them horribly.That was until an ankle biting Yorkie mix showed up in our back door on Thanksgiving years ago. My wife fed it and the rest was history. I always had a great contempt for small anklebiting house dogs, yet we lived in a peaceful coexistence for the first couple of years, mainly because my small ALAYBOY was so in love with him. He had that Napoleon complex going on and was very curmudgeonly. He grew up with my boy. During the pandemic I was still working for almost a year and a half he grew close to me in a way that's hard to explain. To make a long story short, which is too late now
