Erin’s blog asked the question today, (I am paraphrasing because she’s a real Mommy and doesn’t curse like a sailor) “WTF is up with people treating their dogs like their kids?”
(I was PARAPHRASING!)
Anyway. Even though I own baby clothes, I am not a mother to humans yet. Maybe sometime in 2008. But in the meantime, we have Scooby and Betty. We love our dogs. Our dogs eat super good dog food. They have nice kennels to sleep in when they’re not bunking with Mom and Dad. When we go on vacation, the dogs go on vacation to Barkin Buddies. Sometimes I think they have more fun.
(If they do, it’s clearly a per capita for brain cells thing, because they have brains the size of walnuts. It just takes less for them to have more fun because humans require more to have fun.)
I think animal ownership is good training for human parenthood. In some ways (very few) I think animal parenting is harder than human parenting. For instance, Scooby will never learn to yak in a toilet. Ditto other bodily functions.
Do all pet owners have to be like me? No. I totally admit we go a little crazy. (Did I tell you that the dogs had raw beef for Thanksgiving dinner?). That’s one of the reasons it makes me crazy when people mistreat their pets. Proper treatment of pets is not always going to be doggie day care and mega-buck dog food for everyone. But it’s also not “oh, yeah, we have a dog he lives in the shed because he barked all the time”. Or worse yet, “We shot our pet dog because he bit my kid because the kid got close to the dog food because WTF should we train the dog OR the kid re: territorial rights?”*
Someday, there will be a Baby D. Baby D will have it great. Baby D will get to hang out in bed with Mom and Dad, but Baby D will have a crib or a co-sleeper or a Baby Hammock or something to sleep in. The dogs will maybe still sleep with the adult humans. Maybe we’ll be back to kenneling them at night. We’re going to do everything we can to introduce the two species in as careful a manner as possible so that Scooby feels the same tender affection for Baby D that I will, and Betty will hopefully not try to eat Baby D’s chow. Baby D, I hope, will love our dogs the same way her Mommy and Daddy do.**
The thing that does worry me, though, is what if Baby D has doggy allergies? I’d do the right thing of course, but just the thought of it breaks my heart.
The best thing I’ve heard on the dog/owner vs child/parent relationship comes from Dooce. She has a dog and a toddler. When the kid was born, everyone said it would change the relationship she has with her dog and she said No, he’s my baby. Turns out they were both right.
* – That’s a true story from work. Ask D and she’ll tell you. Listening to the person whose grandchild was bit tell the story (separated by a wall) was the closest I’d come to yakking in public.
** I’m just saying “She” because I just finished scrubbing my bathrooms with a bucket of hot water and Lysol cleaner and a sponge and if I bring another toilet-side pee-er into this world I think I’ll lose it.
(oh, and I totally admit to crying like a wackjob the first time I had to take Scooby to the vet to be boarded).