You don’t have to be extremely educated to own a pet I know alot of people who don’t know much and their dogs are loved and fine. As long as you take care of them and don’t ignore things I think its fine. Just like people having babies. We don’t take classes or go to school. Its kind of common sense what to do or if we need outside assistance. I didn’t run off and educate myself on having babies either. Just the nutrician when pregnant or what came up. I had all four without any pain meds what so ever. My kids are great, and so are all my dogs and cats. In fact I had a dog with cancer. The vet asked how did we know so fast something was wrong as it had just reached a point it would casue symtoms or pain. Well we know our pet and we knew he didnt act right that day and on into the next so we took him in. We had no clue what was wrong, just that something was. Thats what vets are for!!!

In my case, I did a decent amount of research on dogs before bringing our Corgi puppy home (although now that I think about it, the research was pretty basic and limited to things like housetraining, spaying, training, etc). But now I realize that no amount of research will give you everything you need- a lot of it is based on experience. I was feeding my dog Science Diet for a month before I learned more about proper dog nutrition and switched her to raw. I used Frontline and Advantage on her before I learned that topicals are basically poison and switched over to using diatomaceous earth and natural repellants for fleas (same situation for vaccines). I continue to learn more about dogs everyday, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning.

Granted, there are obviously a ton of people who don’t do basic research on proper dog care and who don’t seem to know the back of their dog from the front or what to do when their dog is on the verge of death.