Take my furbabies. Please.

You can't squeeze blood from a stone, dog.  You just can't.

Hey there! Are you a parent of one or more young children?  Got yourself a dog, too?  Then I know a little secret: You hate your dog.  “Hate” is, of course, a very strong word.  And quite reductive.  But I think you’ll find if you make a long list of all the things you feel for your dog, and then weigh them out, selecting the one that resonates strongest with your inner most feelings, you’re going to land on hate.  (And you are going to want to sum it up, because believe that with the endless boring kid stories that you subject the world to, no one wants to hear more than one word about your dog.)  You see, hate does not imply indifference; you can’t hate what you don’t care a lot about, and so it allows for bursts of pity, remorse, and even love.  But, yeah, you hate your dog.

And why wouldn’t you?  Your life is filled with doing disgusting things for children who you would walk through fire for.  Your reward is little sleep, no social life, and the psychological torture that any peace you may happen upon can and often will be ripped out from under you at any moment, day or night.  So when your dog, say, walks around the house vomiting at the exact moment you were going to sit down to shovel in a meal during the twenty minutes of reprieve that you were only probably going to get anyways on account of the children, it is not blasé indifference that you feel.  It’s hateful rage.  Because what you do for your kids, you just do.  You may have moments of feeling overwhelmed, but you soldier on.  Your dogs become so very… optional.  But you opted for them.  And now they’re yours.  And they are river-dancing on your last nerve with their smelly, flea-riddled, veterinarian bill inducing antics.

While I still love them on sporadic occasion, I used to love them full-time.  Loved, loved my dogs.  I was far more likely to attend a function if it was dog-friendly.  I chose restaurants in walking distance with patios so that our dog could sit at our feet while we dined.  They made me laugh, slept in my bed when my husband was out of town, and were on my mind frequently when I was apart for them.  Now, I knew that I wanted kids one day, and I don’t think I ever had any true delusions that my dogs would somehow stay equal in my eyes.  Any thoughts I had like that I at least had the sense to keep to myself, because the rational me knew it wasn’t so.  But what I couldn’t and didn’t see was how the similar work of pet ownership – though vastly less demanding – would so frequently require sanity that I simply did not have to offer.

As a disclaimer, I walk my dogs daily.  When we go out of town, we get an in-house dog sitter.  Their kibble is of the finest caliber.  And my kid loves them, which wins them many a bonus point.  But not a day goes by when the burden of their existence does not give me pause, and there are many days when I want them to take a long doggy walk off a short doggy pier.  There is currently a pile of puke in the EXACT CENTER of the floor underneath my large and heavy bed.  I spent a goodly amount of time with a Swiffer, roll of paper towel, and an arsenal of cleaners, yet I know it is only 90% clean.  I have to live with that fact until my husband and I make time to move the bed and scrub the floor.  And yet I can turn my head and see the vile perpetrator of this act lounging her smelly self on my never-to-be-really-clean sofa, just resting up for the next time she can steal food that I beg her to drop because I know it will make her sick and then it does make her sick.  *Shudder*

If you have dogs and no kids, and you one day want kids, I understand that you will not agree with me.  And that is fine.  Because I don’t need you to believe that I am right.  The thing is, I am right.  But I won’t ever say “I told you so.”  There are so many lessons that you’ve got to learn yourself.  So feel free to give me a call when you are ready to admit that you hate your dog.