Wow. I love my dogs. I do. Saturday was 1 year since we put Buster down for cancer and now we have 2 more rescues (a bagel - Freckles and a beagle - Sadie). But I cannot fathom spending $35K in surgeries or other medical expenses for them.

That had to be rough....
CCs may not be "the devil" but they are snakes, and if you play with snakes you will get bitten. I haven't used a credit card in 3 years come August. I don't reckon I'll ever use one again. Haven't had a need to. I couldn't care less what my FICO score is. FICO is not a good measure of winning with money. It only measures if you can play the game with debt. When you purchase something, and pay it "almost" off one month, and pay the final balance the next month.. that is playing the game.
Preaching responsibility with CCs? Okay, my responsibility is that I was unable to play the game, and I think there are alot of people out there who won't admit that they aren't good at the game either (not talking about any of you directly - just in general when people say "oh you just have to be responsible, blah blah blah). I sucked at it, and I got suckered into a ton of debt. So I stopped using them, paid them off and now and only have student loans and mortgage to deal with now...Can't wait to get these student loans out of the way....