Are Puppies just commodities?

No, puppies are not commodities. By that I mean they have far more value than any price tag we, or anyone else can place on them. For most people their puppy and eventually their fully grown dog is a member of the household and therefore, family.

Although in a functional family canines are not given the same weight as the child, brother, sister, mother or any other human in the house. Yet we still care for them, and we labor for them in love. They eat out of our hands and the hands of our children and we care for them even though they offer no immediate or practical value. They don’t cook, or go on grocery runs. They can’t communicate with us or take our jobs for the day so we can sleep in. Quite the contrary, we cook for them and make dedicated trips to the local feed store. We try to tell them what we want from them and they ignore or misunderstand us. They are a job in and of themselves, however small that job may be. 

And yet in spite of all this, when the flood waters come and disaster besets our homes we may forget all of our most expensive possessions to simply save the pup. And If a man or woman leaves their dog behind to be eaten by a storm—and especially if the reason was because they valued worldly goods over the life of the animal, any rational society would condemn that heartlessness. It’s as if puppies and perhaps pets as a whole, have an intrinsic value that simply cannot be measured in coins.

I have personally had many dogs that I called my own, namely, Pebbles. And sadly most of them have now passed on, whether through age or tragedy including. That includes Pebbles. She was always more than just an animal, even from the very first day. She was mine, my very own. A responsibility and yet a reflection of my own heart. If I could love her without any motivation to do so—beyond love’s natural inclination to care for the other, then maybe I’m doing it for some reason beyond reason. Maybe I’m touching after something transcendent. After all, I could easily reason that the worth of my dog is less than the price of her veterinary bills. And after going through the heartache of losing her, a family member, one that was my responsibility to love and perhaps to keep alive. 

Admittedly, I fell into heartache’s oldest trap. “The pain of loss isn’t worth the price of love.” I said. After the tears had fallen I did not want another puppy, I couldn’t afford the price. And this proved to be a staging ground for my relationships with people too. Because if I couldn’t handle the pain of losing a puppy, then I couldn’t handle anything greater than that either. So I pushed away from anything that felt like that care I once had. I ran from any closeness that dared to risk that level of love. I couldn’t care the same because it meant hurting the same. And so I hardened my heart too much to let in another dog, or person, or even God for that matter. 

I grew so cold and callused that I saw puppies as, well, commodities. A business aimed only at profit. Even at times I saw them as a nuisance to be ignored. But it was only revealed to me later that I was wearing a mask to hide the truth. Mostly from myself. The undeniable truth was that Pebbles had worth beyond any dollar I could count. And that was precisely why her death had hurt more than anything else I had ever experienced before. But I have since grown older and learned how to grieve. I now have a new dog, a German shepherd named Nike. It took time but I opened my heart and have healthy relationships now too. I have a beautiful wife, children and even a relationship with God. With my heart and eyes finally opened, I can now see that the price of a pet is not monetary, it is your heart. And this cost, though painful, hard, scary and risky, was in fact worth any price one could pay, even the guaranteed grief. And no matter how many green bills a man gives to bring a new puppy into his family, puppies are not, and will never be—commodities.