There are folk who would choose canine companionship over having human friends any day of the week... Year? Lifetime? Yes, lifetime.
It goes without saying that a dog is never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna turn around and desert you. Humans might. Whereas for dogs, their unconditional loyalty and love couldn’t allow them.
So, why wouldn’t a human reciprocate that love in the same way, you know? Especially if their family has given them up and has let them down. Well, the disappointment only escalates from there, as shares this one Redditor who chose her lovely dog Rory over her estranged mother’s stepson, both of whom needed funds for their medical conditions.
More Info: Reddit | Obligatory Dog Tax
At this point, it should come as no surprise that most will choose dogs over humans any day because dogs are dependable, loyal, and, above all else, loving
Image credits: Trent Jackson (not the actual image)
The story goes that Reddit user u/Cool-Sector8699, with whom Bored Panda got in touch for an interview, is the human companion of a lovely 12-year-old American bully named Rory. Due to her age, she’s struggling with a handful of doggy illnesses and is in need of surgery. OP estimated that between medication, therapy and the surgery itself, it would cost her around $22,000 to make it happen. But money’s not an issue.
What is an issue is that someone in OP’s family is trying to also take advantage of her money’s not an issue status. Specifically, Cool-Sector explains that she grew up with a “weekend parent”—one who never really parented, let the kid partake in survival of the fittest practice, that sort of deal. So, their relationship went cold soon after college.
Still, this one woman's estranged mother decided to get upset that she chose to prioritize her dog over the mom's stepson when it came to medical treatment
Image credits: u/Cool-Sector8699
The story goes that the estranged mom's stepson needed to undergo medical treatment that was $15K—a sum she wanted to get from her daughter
Image credits: MART PRODUCTION (not the actual image)
In that time, the mom managed to marry a man who had a 5-year-old son named David. Incidentally, David needed some medical care that cost $15,000. This is all news to OP (marriage included), and would be news to her current husband, as he doesn’t know the mom has a daughter, i.e. OP.
Anywho, she’s now asking for $15K and Cool-Sector, right off the bat, said no. While the situation sucks, OP said that she simply doesn’t want to help because she just doesn’t, but also, she doesn’t have spare money. The call ended then and there, but the mom did eventually find out about Rory and the upcoming surgery, which led to another interaction in the form of numerous voicemails and texts calling her every name under the sun.
Incidentally, the daughter had already decided on a surgery for her pupper Rory, which was estimated to cost $22K
Image credits: u/Cool-Sector8699
At this point, OP figured she needs to end this for good, so she texts back that Rory means the world to her, while David is just a random kid that she has zero emotional investment in. This is besides being out of the loop with the whole marriage thing, and, last but not least, this was mom’s first contact in years. And she wants money? “Nah,” concluded OP.
This in turn caused a chain reaction and now the whole family is upset at OP for choosing a dog over a kid. The last thing OP did was get in touch with her mom’s husband, David’s dad, telling him what had happened, asking him to pass on a message to the mom and everyone else in the family to go fornicate themselves. Oh, and blocking them.
The mom got rejected for a number of reasons, causing a bit of a family feud that led to everyone getting blocked, as noted the daughter in her update
Image credits: u/Cool-Sector8699
She also provided a doggy tax—meet Rory, the American Bully
But OP was curious whether this was the right thing to do, and so the story landed in r/AITA, the internet’s moral judge on everything that matters in people’s lives. “My decision was final and I just wanted to see if I'm [the jerk], so I thought it’d be best to get strangers’ opinion, given they are impartial,” explained OP.
The community was unanimous in their decision to declare OP NTA. According to them, there’s a lot that’s wrong in this situation, and OP is more than justified to not give the money to the mom: they aren’t close, she obviously is only trying to take advantage, and to top it all off, she wants to keep her daughter secret from her husband. Who, actually, now knows about the daughter.
Folks had no doubt that the author of the post was in the clear, sharing their critique of the mother and the rest of the family
OP told Bored Panda that there haven’t been any more developments in the story with regards to the family itself: “I haven't been in contact with my egg donor or her new family. I also went NC with everyone in my circle that supported my birth giver.”
She continued: “It's not just dogs [most people are quick to write off as “inferior” in situations like this]. It's all animals. People have a superiority complex and believe all animals are inferior when in reality it's the exact opposite. And I think [the family] got the message. I haven't heard from them.”
Back when the original post came out, Cool-Sector also provided an update on Rory (as well as the obligatory dog tax, just look at the good gurl!); it wasn’t anything life-threatening as it was nerve damage in her hind legs, so the surgery should help her walk properly.
And since it has been a month since the post, we checked in about Rory, and she’s doing just fine: “She's doing amazing. She has maybe 2 more weeks of therapy. She has made amazing progress. We are all impressed with how far she has come in such a short time. We are going to go on a short trip soon,” said OP.
You can check out the article in full, as well as everyone’s verdict right here. And, now, if we could all hold hands in the comment section below and send some positivity and love to Rory, that’d be great. You can also share other things there, but keep it short because nobody’s gonna have enough of an attention span to read a lot with a picture of a happy good gurl in the article!