Shortly after “ … as if the dog were its mother” - why “were” and not “was”? was closed as a duplicate, the OP deleted the question.
I've no idea whether you lose rep points for having your question closed (though if so, I think on balance maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea).
But it seems to me that it's often a good idea to retain closed questions. Particularly if they're closed for being duplicates, since this improves the chances of future questioners finding one or more earlier posts that resolve their problem without them needing to ask again.
Cutting to the chase, I voted to undelete that question for my reason as given here (obviously I can't post to that effect on the question itself, because comments are disabled there).
I realise I'm effectively overriding the OP's wishes, but it seems to me that once a post has been made here, it more or less "belongs" to the community, to be used as we see fit.
If you agree or disagree with me about the principle, please vote for/against this meta question. If you agree about my judgement in this specific case (AND have whatever rep is necessary), please vote there as well.
(I'm surprised I can't find an earlier meta question on this. Apologies if I just didn't look hard enough.)