This was the first one I found that had any information about the dog’s reaction after the amputation, and much later. It says the dog took 4 weeks to “start acting like himself,” and still whined at night, 6 weeks later. This seems about the same timescale as humans adapting to disabilities, so you’re right about hedonic treadmills in dogs. Probably a lot of other animals have them too. There’s still all the animals that don’t have time in the rest of their lives to get used to what happens to them. But you have made me up my estimate of how good the average animal life is.
I just watched some youtube videos about amputee dogs, including this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJxEIXRz_Kk
This was the first one I found that had any information about the dog’s reaction after the amputation, and much later. It says the dog took 4 weeks to “start acting like himself,” and still whined at night, 6 weeks later. This seems about the same timescale as humans adapting to disabilities, so you’re right about hedonic treadmills in dogs. Probably a lot of other animals have them too. There’s still all the animals that don’t have time in the rest of their lives to get used to what happens to them. But you have made me up my estimate of how good the average animal life is.