@Hal Pollner . we love dogs. cats are great for some people. Radar the Wonder dog is 13 yr old Chiweenie. He loves being covered up and loves to sleep, and play at night while we watch TV. He ss loveable, and cuddly. He was trained to pad potty , and this works great for us. He is not allowed store bought doggie treats.but has a baby carrot every morning and a couple lks of coffee. The down side is he sheds something horrible. He has cost us less than any dog we have ever had. Point being, keep looking for a pet that fits your needs. I do not recommend a puppy for you they are a lot of work. People have and love and care for pets live longer and happier - so I read . he
It’s a hard thing but It has often been my contention that if a person doesn’t have the capacity to take care of a human baby then they shouldn’t take on the responsibility of caring for a pet. Being in a care facility plus one’s personal health already brings about a bunch of limitations so yeah, maybe having a pet by proxy might be the best bet.
Describe pad potty please. I never heard of it. How successful has it been? Poop in the house is probably my number one reason for no pooping pets.
@Ed Wilson .. dogs like cats learn to Go on a pad or inside a litterbox. We use the pads. He came trained that way, we just never had him do differently. He is getting old so on occasion he misses.
I'd vote for fish. I would not do the tropical aquarium thing...they are not low maintenance. I had 6 tanks when I was a kid. Just get some goldfish and a decent size bowl. It helps to have a living thing around...it does not have to be cuddly. Remind Faye that she cannot talk about attracting babes in a thread titled "Low maintenance."
I got sucked into buying pet rocks for my kids. Stupid, I know, like Vince's slap shot or Ron Popeal's stuff....
Neon tetras are extremely durable fish, known to survive near simmering when the tank heater goes out of kilter.
I had my aquariums back in the day when you could buy neon tetras and sword tails 10/$1 I could never get the tetras (or any other egg-layer) to breed. Had a tank with marbles & breeding bushes for them. The live-bearers were lean mean breeding machines.
The most dog-like fish is the Siamese Fighting fish and they can be quite beautiful. They will follow your finger at the side of the tank, probably see it as a rival, but you can teach it a 'trick' or two, then. They used to be one or two dollars too but at petco recently they were 15-20 dollars!!! otherwise I might have considered one for my counter.
They have what it called a pet therapy toy dog, and they are amazing , what all they can do. These little plush puppies have sensors built in, so they actually respond to being petted like a real dog would, and they are finding that older people who can no longer care for a live animal, get a lot of comfort from these little pets. Here is what they look like and how they respond to people. This is an older video, so they might have even more sophisticated ones by now.