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Good job trying to play devil's advocate here RP...
I'll play devil's advocate for a moment. Though, for the record, all animals are intrusive in terms of time, effort, and cost. Most younger guys would do better not to own one. Guys that do often look forward to a life-break in owning animals after they pass away.
Second, to the OP, if you are wondering if some behavior is going to make you alpha or beta then you are likely beta. Alphas largely define alpha behavior, they aren't defined by it. Does that make sense?
For an example, off of the top of my head at the moment, watch Mickey Rourke in the movie Spun. He wears cowboy outfits that heavily flirt with being queer looking. White boots, pink shirts, and tight pants. However, he's an alpha mutherfucker in that movie regardless and thus makes his queer wardrobe alpha because he wears it. He defines the wardrobe, it doesn't define him.
The same goes for everything else for alphas, including animal ownership. In fact, as a training exercise, I challenge you to get the tiniest toy dog, I suggest a Yorkie, that you can find and work on making your ownership of it define its ownership as alpha, and neutralizing any negative effect it has on your value.
Work on making all value definitions emanate from your being, and on neutralizing the effect of anything external to you that would have defined you before you became the arbiter of value.
In fact, this might be the best psycho-social definition of alpha of which I can think.
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Cats are stupid animals. Contrary to popular belief, felines are pretty unintelligent and have far less mental capacity than a canine. You can't teach them shit partially because they have little to no capacity for object permanence and poor observational learning insight,
Intelligence differences between two relatively intelligent animals is a non-factor in a pet for most people. Cats are smart enough to be better than most pets, and I don't look to still-retard level intelligence (no disrespect intended to dog lovers) as a qualifier.
Besides that, the day-to-day effect of slightly higher intelligence in domesticated animals mostly means increased emotional neediness and its resultant problems. I'll take slightly dumber and less emotional over the ability to be annoyingly better at getting into trouble, and the propensity to develop psychological problems, any day.
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and they are useless animals aside from 2 things: providing company, and chasing/catching vermin. It's something you feed, clean up after, and pet when it walks over to you. And they can be very needy - I can't tell you how many "cat moms" I've banged out and slept over where there cats would scratch at the door and whine constantly to go out/come in/get attention.
All true. If you need something more than company, look elsewhere. Though, I'd venture that the company of a small, mostly odorless animal who shits into a cleanable 1x2 box is all that most pet owners want. The benefit of a pet does not increase with size.
Dogs do have more personality, in general, for better or worse. They engage in play more readily, though most pet owners will eventually be playing with their dogs during their mostly mandatory daily walks in order to keep the dog from going crazy due to the aforementioned psychological requirements.
Cats can be needy, but they also don't become emotionally damaged when you reject their neediness unless you really neglect them over time. You can tell them to fuck-off, every day until you are ready to give them attention, and later its like nothing happened. They're mostly cool with it. That isn't the case with dogs.
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Also, there is nothing about owning and caring for a cat that translates to game.
If pets are the item that a player is picking up his game tips from, then he doesn't need game tips as he's exhausted and integrated every other source.
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Dogs on the other hand are highly intelligent animals that can be trained, and in the act of training a dog this translates very well to game. Learning how to assert dominance, positive/negative reinforcement, frame control, etc. Dogs are also very utilitarian animals.
I've never owned a dog and I can dominate almost all dogs with no effort. I offer that owning a dog isn't necessary to learn these skills.
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The only dogs that are loud, unruly, and smelly are dogs that are poorly taken care of.
In my youth, I was a dog groomer for one summer. I respect your opinion but I disagree. I've never known a dog not to impart a smell to its home environment, however slight (even when bathed often). Some dogs are well trained, but the vast majority are not. Though, some are natural sweethearts. Most, especially for the first half of life, are simply on the level of a hyper three year old.
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The bit about dogs being for "lonely people" implying that cats are not is simply ludicrous, especially considering how much we rag on lonely cat ladies here on the forum. Cats are the quintessential lonely-person's pet. Reason being you can be a sour depressed recluse and it will matter 0% to a cat's wellbeing so long as you still feed it and clean it's shit up.
Generalizations aside, I'm not sure why an active adult male would want a dog that is the equivalent of a needy and active child for eighteen years. The work / reward balance just isn't there in my opinion. The lower maintenance for a cat is a feature, not a bug, for anyone who values their own independence.
Dogs Benefits:
More dynamic interaction and play
Some provide a level of home security
Special needs applications (work, blindness, etc)
Dog Negatives:
They invariably smell. If you don't smell dogs, then you've simply nose deaf or never had a good sense of smell.
They need to shit outside, their shits are large, and you need to pick up that shit every time. Most dogs will have stints where they shit and or piss on the floor in your house.
Any dog over 10 lbs is needless extra weight and bulk for the benefits of a pet that most are after.
Grooming is more involved.
They require much more attention to stay psychologically healthy.
Assuming that you don't have a fenced in yard or chain your dog to a spike, you need to walk it twice per day. This is not an insignificant amount of time.
Behavioral issues are common and when they occur tend to be either exceedingly time consuming or expensive, and are always highly annoying.
Many breeds cannot be dissuaded from yapping or barking.
Cat Benefits:
Low maintenance
Light weight (less food cost, less handling inconvenience and discomfort, less fur to groom).
More emotionally resilient and independent, in general.
They don't require outside time unless you acclimate them to it. As such, they are much more apartment and small house friendly.
They do their business in a small box.
Cat negatives:
Their personalities are less dynamic than those of dogs.
They tend to scratch up carpets and furniture. If they take to a scratching post, you're lucky.
They tend to trigger allergies more than dogs.
Arguably, you shouldn't keep cats in the same house with developing humans (children) due to toxoplasmosis risk.