made the following arguments:

1. Caring for a baby is totally easy

"having a baby is sooooo haaaarrrrrd"

2. Children shouldn't take precedence over animals:

"She also seems to assume, with no critical thought whatsoever, that the moment she and her husband had kids, those kids took precedence over everything else in the entire universe."

(the LW actually made no such argument - I would challenge you to find anything even remotely supporting this)

"...never mind that he has much longer-standing responsibilities to the dog"

So, since the dog was around longer, it's more important than his kids. Also, his kids apparently don't really need him anyway.

3. Having part of your own house become unlivable is no big deal:

"but she can avoid sacrificing her "olfactory comfort" by avoiding that "small part" of the house"

Actually, she never said "small part", she just said 'part'. You were the one who preferred "small part" since apparently you have visited her house and know exactly how big it is.

4. A father helping the mother with parental responsibilities isn't that important:

"She can't stand it that her husband is putting something else before her own precious preferences"

Yes, helping with the children is just a selfish, precious preference. So is her unbelievably self-centered desire to live in a house where none of the rooms reek of urine.

Look, if you have a pet and decide to have a baby, you better be willing to properly look after your pet and your baby, otherwise you're not fit to have either one.

Frankly, that woman is more thoughtless than she thinks she is. She took a dog who was used to having freedom to roam the whole house alongside her master and confined her to a few rooms. That's cruel. It's pretty obvious that the dog was acting out by peeing, because it started when the baby was born. You have to take care with your pets when a baby is introduced into the house, because they become jealous, just like an older child would.

That dog deserves her old life back, and if it requires medicine, doggie diapers, or just having some cleaning supplies on hand, then that's what must be done. It's called responsibility.

oh geeze with the kids arguement!

Having kids is HARD work, but you still manage to survive, cook dinner, spend time with family, work, rake the leaves, feed the dog.

heck yah it's hard work, but bazillions of parents have done it and managed to do lots of other things at the same time including take a poor dog for a 10 minute walk.

The truth is that this isn't really about the dog. It's about the husband using the dog as an excuse to get out of some of his responsibilities towards his family. Add to that the fact that the wife isn't a dog person anyway, and the strain it puts on someone to live in a house that at least partially reeks of urine, and of course you've got a problem.

Do you believe locking a dog in one room all day alone doesn't constitute mistreatment?

she DID say "small part" (hence the quotation marks), and she does appear to me to have the attitude that the dog (who is not more important than the children, but who *is* important and does have a claim on the husband's attention) is basically an inconvenience for her rather than a creature with legitimate needs, but my sarcasm about babies wasn't directed at her--it was directed at people here who are sounding like they think pets should be discarded when babies arrive. And I'm pleased to be able to inform you that sarcasm isn't an argument.

Here's what I'm saying: babies are important, but pets are important, too. Husbands have responsibilities to their families, but they also have responsibilities to pets. Husbands love their families, but it would also make perfect sense for them to love pets they have had for more than a decade. Wives ought to have some respect for such love. People who are bothered by smells ought to get better cleaning products and do some cleaning themselves instead of just getting upset when their partners aren't doing the cleaning exactly right. People who are annoyed that their partners spend time on something other than them and the Almighty Baby ought to talk with their partners and stop using "but I have a baaaaaaby to take care of" as an excuse for everything that inconveniences them. People who rank their own inconvenience (e.g. having to avoid a small room so as to escape an annoying smell) as more important than another person's or animal's basic survival needs (like having a place to live and getting minimal exercise) ought to rethink their priorities.

Is that better? You're free to disagree, as I don't doubt you will.

Earlier this week readers got into a gender war based on a letter Cary responsed to. There were 125 letters. Now that we've progressed (I use the term loosely) to a human/animal war, I'll be interested to see the final tally of letters. As of 2:15pm ET it stands at 68.

If the majority of letters here represent in any way the collective intelligence of progressives in this country, then God help us. When I want to read a bunch of sanctimonious, self-righteous bullshit, I head over to the Free Republic. I really hope you all are just reacting emotionally and will later think better of wishing ill on this woman just because she's a little annoyed at her house reeking of urine.

I have a cats, and I love them as though they were my children. But you know what? They're not children, they're cats. I remind myself of this when necessary. I mean, how many of you animal lovers eat meat and wear leather? How many of you take political action to stop factory farming? How many of you are going to personally take responsibility for taking care of any relatives who are old and sick instead of putting them in nursing homes? Quit with the stone-throwing already.

And as for what these children are going to learn from the situation, they'll probably learn that life is full of hard choices and conflicting desires. Sometimes you have to balance compassion and self-interest. It's a lesson most people here apparently have yet to learn.