I've had neighbors that clearly had no such concerns.
Those people shouldn't have pets either.
It's a childish western obsession: grown people with lifestyle animals. It has only got worse as childish western people acquired puppies to process their pandemic loneliness that they left alone when their old lives returned, while serious (poor) people had to deliver them food.
[0] which in retrospect I wish I'd done, because it would have exposed rather earlier exactly why the small dog was being left on its own in a garden of a house where the family in question were not actually resident. The small dog was perhaps trying to communicate something that might have materially changed our behaviour.
1) don't have a pet that you will have to leave alone for too long because it is cruel to do this just so you have a pet to keep you company when you have time to enjoy it
2) there is no 2)
I have plenty of grace for people in my life -- much, much more than you might imagine. I have no patience for people who treat the happiness of their pet as transactional and have created a service economy to support it.
That is definitely the more ethical answer, then.
I do not have a pet because despite having the space and working from home, I would be asking an animal to be lonely with me when it could be happier elsewhere, I would have to leave that animal in kennels if I needed to travel, and as a non-driver there are too many ways I have to travel where it is IMO inappropriate to take a pet.
This is not a thing that makes me personally happy. But it's the more ethical answer.
> Accidents happen, partners leave, life conditions change, it is totally unavoidable.
And pets can be found new homes in those rare situations.
The average lifespan of a dog is 10-13 years.
The average lifespan of a cat is 13-17 years.
The average tenure for a job in the US is 4 years.
It isn't rare. Can I guess you'd give up your child too if your job changed?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I still haven't needed doggy day care, but I fully understand how it would happen. There have been periods we've probably been lucky she hasn't developed behaviours (or bit me in my butt to remind me she still existed).