I think with the legal ramifications of changing the name to "Guardian", we better all hope we don't have nosy, irrational neighbors or family or friends... or ones with personal vendettas... or champion field dogs or agility dogs or show dogs, etc, that puts you under the radar of animal rights extremists... or at least have the money to fight any and all frivalous lawsuits of anybody suing you for guardianship of your dog, because in their view your dog's not happy.

We all have different perceptions of how to raise our dogs for them to be happy. As legal owner of my dogs, I have to follow the current laws set down to not abuse or neglect them, but I do not have to follow the whims of other people's views of the right way to raise them. But with more or less legally giving dogs human-like rights, who knows what someone else is going to deem as cruel that I feel makes my dogs happy, like "forcing" them to do agility.

I don't know, I just really feel there's an ulterior motive to this whole movement of giving dogs rights, that's ulimately going to lead to none of us being good enough to have dogs. And I think this legal name change is the first step towards that goal. Why does it need to be legal? If we personally want to call ourselves "Guardian", "Companion", "Mom", etc... Go for it... I do in everyday life, but legally I want to stay "Owner".

Par...