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I'd love to have a pet too, but I don't have the conditions for that (including financial conditions), so I don't. Even though I'd love to. But having a pet is responsibility, which includes financial responsibility. So yes, you shouldn't have a right to have a pet, when you can't afford it. That it may even be controversial is bewildering to me. Animals aren't things which exist for your pleasure.

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Pets are companions who you steward because you're the name on the lease and the one with the bank account. Like all living things, they're usually healthy without intervention as long as their basic needs are met. If you can fulfill that stewardship 100% of the time for 5 or 10 or 20 years, but then can't pull things together in some exceptional case at the end, that's not a failing. That's just one of those sad things that happens in life.

As long as you can afford basic care for a pet, then you can have a pet.

food, water, bedding, the ability to keep it safe, vaccines(they're pretty cheap mostly and often done by animal shelters for free--neutering too).

There are so many pets in shelters who could live good happy lives but no one is there to adopt them.

Better a pet to live with an owner who cant afford their chemo when theyre 14 years old than to be euthanized at 2 years old.

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