Is your family being supportive for your pet hobby?

Fellow pet owners, is your family being supportive for your pet hobby?

My family isn't all that overly joyful over my aquariums. Even they admit they are a cool sight to watch. I guess it is probably because I have 4 fish tanks instead of just one. Their first issue was the cost. The initial cost to set up my first aquarium was well over $1,500.

Other than that, I really do not see a problem.
Fish are quite low maintenance pet animals, very low demanding, and they don't walk out of the room to bother anybody when you are busy doing something else lol. I take care of all the maintenance. So they are basically trouble free. Still they are not as supportive as I would like them to be.

I guess you just can't force your belief or hobby on someone else no matter how popular the hobby is, not even your own family members.

I could imagine that the owners of snakes might get the worst of it. Correct me if I am wrong.

What about you and your family? Are they supportive for your pet hobby?

My dad has always loved cats. My parents long ago realised they would never have grandkids from me, and Dad would send birthday cards to the "grandcats" instead.

Our families have pets of one kind or another so it's more that they enjoy our pets as we do theirs. There's dogs, cats, birds, and even my cousin up in Virginia has what we call her mini-farm. She has a horse and a few ducks and chickens.

Dogs, cats, and birds are the most acceptable pets for most people who don't even own pets. Other pets, not so much as far as getting family "approval". My family doesn't hate fish, but they don't like how much money I spent on the fish hobby.

Anyone with reptiles have problem with family "approval"?
I am sure my family will absolutely hate it if I ever try to get a snake.

There are people having scorpion, tarantula, etc. even less common pets. None of them would be accepted by my family, not that I have any plan to get them lol.

(05-31-2012, 02:02 AM)Ram8349 Wrote: Anyone with reptiles have problem with family "approval"?
I am sure my family will absolutely hate it if I ever try to get a snake.

There are people having scorpion, tarantula, etc. even less common pets. None of them would be accepted by my family, not that I have any plan to get them lol.

the only rule in my house is: no snakes until i move out :p

other than that, if i support my own reptile hobby, my family shows some interest and agrees to help out when i need it my mom thinks my jackson's stud is the cutest thing in the world XD

Figured.
Most people can't accept snakes.

My mother is a university professor. Once she told me during a class presentation, a student brought his pet snake. In front of the whole class, he fed the snake with a live mouse. Some girls were screaming when it happened.

In my opinion snakes are beautiful. But a dangerous beauty. Sorda like a flame.

Some people even can't stand dogs, some people dislike cats, some people can't stomach birds, and so on. Everyone is different. Snakes just get worse end of it because most people are afraid of them.

Most species of snakes are completely harmless. Which are most of the species kept as pets. There are very few species that actually pose a threat to humans, and I would not advocate any of those as pets. But using that logic saying all snakes are dangerous, would be like saying it is dangerous to have a cocker spaniel, because wolves are dangerous.

And rather unusual stat, in the US, there have been less than half the number of deaths from pet snakes in the last 30 years, than there were from pet dogs in 2011. I don't remember the exact number, I should look that up again

On the original topic, my family is supportive, my better half thinks they are all kittens sometimes And our girls like everything, and want to keep everything, but of course don't want to take care of any of it.

Fishbone just hit another spot.
Being "ok" with what you have is one thing, true supportive would be helping you to take care of the pets.

I guess it is the price to pay for getting "my" or "your" pets. None of my family members would even lift a finger to help with my fish under normal circumstances. They'll only do it when I am traveling. It is a pain to leave detailed instructions, because they aren't even eager to learn since they are just "ok" with it.

Well, my better half is quite helpful with all the scaly things, and she does like them, a few we call hers. But if something is wrong, they become mine again She actually does quite a bit of the work involved, so I can't really complain one bit.

But, when I looked at the poll, I was wanting an option: "They like it, and help out a little".

I wouldn't really call my pets a "hobby" - they all earn their keep (well, except the horses; they're just hayburners for the most part). The cats control the mouse population (and being in the country there are many); the dogs alert us to visitors that come into the yard and the alpacas are basically a cash producer (as soon as we get them sheared they will be). The kids like all of the animals; hubby just tolerates them (although he has taken a shine to one of the dogs).

I only have a dog. I live with my Mom and she's fine with that.

She is terrified of most other animals. There's no way she'd tolerate a rodent or snake in the house--or near it for a 10 block radius . I'm okay with that. As long as I have a dog, I'm happy.

I learned to keep pets from my father. He, himself, loves to rear birds. At one time, he even bred canaries. When I was a kid, I remember watching all the bettas that my father had. So when I started having pets, my parents were fine with my hobby.

It's just my husband and I, and he was the one who got us our first bird and then our first cat several years later. It's kind of a funny story how the cat came about. It was our anniversary; I'd been in a bad car accident and was suffering an incredible amount of pain and was loopy on prescrip meds, and the hubby was trying to figure out what could take my mind off of the bad situation and bring some joy into my life. He stumbled upon a "free kitten" sign and chose a cute, rambunctious tabby out of the home's garage. He brought it up to our bed and plopped it on me (it was crawling with fleas, by the way!). I took one look at it and said (remember I was loopy on meds): "My dad's not going to let me keep it!"
My dad and his entire family HATES cats! Many of them are hunters and they actually shoot cats if they see them wandering in the woods - what JERKS, I know!!!! Ugh!!!
It's funny, but now that all of us kids are grown up, we all are cat owners! And when dad comes to visit, our cats love to go hang out on the couch with papa!!! hahaha
My mother grew up with cats and loves them, though she's not been allowed to have one since marrying my father over 55 years ago. She comes to pet sit our animals when we go on vacation. She is very supportive, but my father still pretty much hates cats. He does get a kick out of our bad boy Tonkinese though.
The parents weren't too supportive of when we spent thousands of dollars on a very sick cat years ago. Dad was especially disapproving and said some unkind things during that stressful period.
My Quaker bird hates my dad. Dad tried picking the bird up one time and Picasso bit him. The Quaker bite is always a very nasty one, meant to draw blood and hurts like heck, so dad flung the bird to the floor. Picasso has never forgiven him and goes batty whenever it sees dad!
So that's the story of my family and their support of our choice of pets. Oh - the hubby despises the Tonkinese cat of mine. It has actually been a real source of conflict at times between us. That's hard when your spouse hates your most beloved pet, but I think we've come to an understanding now.

I was very curious about Fishbone and I'm glad I got to see his answer on this question! I wondered if he was married since I don't know any women who like snakes - except myself and one of my grandma's. Now I know he's got a good match for a spouse! Cool! :-)

I have a cat and everyone in my home love my cats, but a year ago when i got this cat my father said to me give this to somebody who will raise it, and this is difficult job focus on your studies but i denied, and with passage of time everybody like my cat and my father too.

yes my family is pet supportive. i have a dog at my home and they cares of dog.

I don't have any family that lives in the same state as me, but my brother in Michigan collects rescues also LOL My girlfriend is so supportive that she actually contributes to the menagerie even after saying NO MORE lol In all actuality she is worse than I am, especially when it comes to chinchillas and hedgehogs

I'm not legally an adult (I'm 12) so my parents have to live with everything. They didn't like it when I got a rabbit but they got attached to her.

The lot of us are animal lovers. We all love dogs and hand held mammals. And some of us have reptiles. I don't think there is a animal at least one of us don't like. I'm not a big fan of cock roaches, but my older daughter as two Madagascar hissing cock roaches. Whichever animal it is one of us will love it.

My country itself is not very pet friendly, here it's still heavily enforced that animals are filthy and should be kept only outside and with a purpose (food, house guarding, mice catching etc.). So it's not very strange that my own family enforces these same "ideals" as well. They can't do anything about me having cats, of course, but it's heavily frowned upon and has been the source of many arguments. One of the saddest things I've encountered lately was when my not-animal-lover uncle moved to a house and got a dog, because a yard should have a dog I guess. He and his girlfriend were having fun playing "responsible pet owners" at first, taking him to the vet and on daily walks, but I can see them getting bored with it. I get very sad seeing my grandparents collecting bones from the table for him (which are very sharp and dangerous). My grandfather even convinces me with a smile that those are like cookies for dogs. The only supportive one is my brother, who actually loves animals (where he and I picked it up, I haven't got a clue). I'm actually getting a little sad just writing this... As for me, I wouldn't mind my boyfriend getting any kind of pet. I'm a bit scared of snakes and spiders, but I would grow to love them if he kept them.

As I said before, I was lucky to be born in a family that owned birds, cats and dogs, so what I did is to expand their horizons by taking in other species like fish, hamsters or peacocks.

I admit that sometimes money is short and it's pretty hard to feed all our animals but all of us are willing to sacrifice for them and we do it without even thinking about it. So yeah, my family is very supportive

I'm 50 years old and my family still shakes their heads at me. I've had nearly everything and very few regrets about any pet I've ever owned. I grew up on a dairy farm and was active in 4-H, so I had the World at my feet! I guess the thing about my love of animals that the family always didn't care for was the potato chip approach..you can't have just one. I have three dogs, three cats and a red tailed boa at the current time. It's the boa that either gets the raised eyebrow or that I keep secret. I have phobic people in my family.

I have had pets all my life, and my parents were very supportive of the pets, but the dogs were not ever, ever allowed to be in the house, not even for a little bit. My mom was totally strict on that part, but otherwise, my parents loved the dogs and cats as much as I did.
After I grew up, I mostly lived in the country, and so my kids naturally all grew up around animals, dogs, cats, chickens, rabbits, horses, we pretty much had about all the animals at one time or another.

Now, I can't take care of large animals, so I just have three little dogs, and they are my "fuzzy kids", since my children are all long since grown and gone.
My husband does not like cats, so all we have is the dogs, but he is good to help me with them, and even bathes them sometimes to help me out.