Practical (Stoic) Dog Advice for "Max"

Earlier this week I received an email from someone we’ll call Max for the sake of Max’s privacy. The contents of this email were as follows:

I’m sure Max’s situation isn’t an uncommon one. Marriage and divorces notwithstanding, splitting pets after splitting up with a partner is something even the non-married have experienced – I, myself, allowed my pets to be part of the reason I stayed in my previous “not-working” relationship for so long. It's hard to leave your pets; even harder to split them up.

So this week’s edition of the newsletter I’m going to provide some advice that might be controversial – certainly not everyone will agree with it – but I hope it will guide Max through navigating this difficult situation.

It can’t be about you and the ex.

It’s not uncommon for spiteful parties to use dogs, other pets, and even children as a conduit for malicious intent. When parents get divorced, for example, it’s somewhat of a trope that one of them will fight viciously for sole-custody just to ensure their former partner is as emotionally hurt as possible.

Whether or not this is as common an occurrence as television shows and pop culture discussions suggest it is, it’s certainly not appropriate behavior. We shouldn't act against our children's or pets' best interests just to hurt someone we believe deserves it.

This decision has to be about the dogs and not how Max and his ex feel about the dogs and one another.

What is best for the dogs?

If the dogs are close and have a strong bond, separating them at all will work against their nature to bond with the individual members of their pack. It would be, to the dogs, not entirely dissimilar from splitting up the kids in a divorce – sending one to live full-time with mom and the other with dad.

It’s not that the kids wouldn’t survive such a thing; it's that you're disrupting their natural ability to bond and maintain relationships, which isn't a natural choice.

Splitting up the dogs, without regular visitation, is probably inappropriate; but regular visitation with your ex-wife is probably also inappropriate, and if it isn’t at first, it will be when you both move on and begin relationships with new partners.

What’s best for the dogs is for them to stay together, unless the only way to do that is reasoned, by Max, to be an ultimately worse choice. For example, if the only way to keep the dogs together would be to give them up to another family or a shelter that promised to home them together, then keeping them together requires Max to remove pack members anyway (those pack members being Max and his ex, because dogs very much incorporate humans into their packs).

Max must make an unjust choice, justly

Since the case might be that the only way to keep the pack together is to give the dogs up, and giving the dogs up still doesn’t keep the pack together (because Max and his ex are no longer together), then splitting the dogs up, while an unnatural thing to choose to do, isn’t unreasonable given the context of Max’s situation.

Max and his ex must choose to split the dogs up, there’s no getting around it. But this is exactly where we started, so… now what?

The (likely) just approach

First, both Max and his ex must be realistic about their ability to care for these dogs. Can Max care well for any combination of the dogs, or is his new (for example) single bedroom, yard-less apartment in the city more appropriate a fit for the smaller dogs in the pack as opposed to the German Shepherd and the Greyhound (I’m making this combination up, I don’t know what dogs Max actually has).

If Max can only care for two of the dogs appropriately, because of the environment he is going to be keeping them in (for example), then that’s the end of the problem: those are the two dogs he takes.

If both Max and his ex can care for any combination of the dogs equally well, the next thing to figure out is the best way to pair the dogs with one another. Is it the case that, within the pack, a natural preference has arisen? Do Dog A and Dog C seem to get along better with each other? And maybe Dog B and Dog D get along in the same sort of way.

If it is the case that the dogs are equally fond of one another, and there can be figured no combination of metrics that can help make this choice a logical one rather than an emotional one, then there’s only one option left, and it puts the onus on Max.

Max must act like the Prokoptôn he wants to be

Dogs are an indifferent thing; they do not impact your ability to pursue and achieve Virtue. However, how Max makes this choice is a direct reflection of how much progress he’s made along his journey.

The most appropriate thing to do, in this scenario – in the one where we are left with no other way of choosing other than with emotionally charged reasoning (e.g., “I like these dogs the most, and so I want these dogs”) – is to let your ex choose.

If you believe she will care for the dogs appropriately, then your choice to let her choose whichever of the four dogs she prefers (or even all four dogs) is one that reflects on your understanding of what’s truly important in this difficult scenario: that the dogs be properly cared for and live as fulfilling lives as possible given the situation.

By choosing to let her choose, you are not abandoning your dogs. Instead, you are choosing to allow all four of your dogs to continue to be looked after and cared for with as minimal an impact on their wellbeing as is possible (again, given the situation).

Max, I do not envy your situation – and I’ve been in it myself. My choice was to let my ex keep both of our dogs. My reasoning was that I knew, deep down, she could give them a better home. It hurt me tremendously, in the non-Stoic sense of the word “hurt”, to make that choice… but I made it anyway, because I reasoned that it was the right thing to do.

You need to do what you feel is right, Max. I hope this has helped.

Thanks for reading.