Man or Beast?

Six weeks into my marriage, I decided it was probably time we buckle down and start a family. We had been putting things off long enough with this married-without-children thing, and it seemed about time to get down to business. My husband, on the other hand, felt that six weeks was not quite the eternity I thought it was, so we discussed a slightly less life-altering alternative.

And thus began our first experience as dog owners. (Oh, how little we knew.) We had both had dogs growing up, but let's face it - the child enjoys the dog, the parent cares for it. And what we have found in the last 3 1/2 years of dog parenting followed by 8 1/2 months of human parenting is that there are actually more similarities than dissimilarities between the two roles.

The first myth of dog ownership versus parenthood: Dogs are cheaper than kids. Maybe in the long-run, yes, dogs are cheaper than kids. After all, their life expectancy is much shorter. Plus they don't need a car or college education. But depending on the dog, it's really not the savings you might think. I guess if you're getting a dog to be an after-thought to your life, you don't have to do much more than give it some grub, buy a collar and chain, and maybe remember to give it some shots if you aren't into the whole worms and rabies thing. But if you treat your canine like another member of the family, then you have a whole other thing coming to you. And since my first baby had four legs and was covered in fur, I saw to every need with the devotion and willingness to sacrfice of any first-time mom. And, boy, does it add up once you figure in vet bills, food, destroyed household items and furnishings during the potty training/DON'T-CHEW-THAT! phase, a crate and toys, boarding or pet sitting if you go out of town, and so on and so forth.

Another myth of dog ownership versus parenthood is that you aren't shackled by a dog like you are by a kid. Well, in one sense, this is true. Instead of hiring a sitter, you can lock your dog in a crate for six hours and even come back to find him perfectly content, in good health, and just downright excited to see you. Nonetheless, a dog definitely ties you down. Anytime my husband and I have wanted to plan a spontaneous, spur of the moment trip out of town (even for a long weekend), we've stopped short, realizing that the cheap weekend deal we found a couple hours away would not be nearly so cheap when we figured in boarding fees. And oftentimes finding a boarder with last-minute availability has been hard to come by, since we made the oh-so-smart decision to own a 110 lb. beast that nobody wants to board and nobody has room to board vs. one of those nice, cute compact little things people can stick in their purses. (Though, really, those little things don't qualify as dogs. They're more like dog treats. My dog could eat two or three of them for lunch and still need dessert.) But anyway, the point being, travel is tricky with a dog as well as a kid. Even if you take the dog on the trip and find somewhere that accepts pets and accepts pets as large as ours, you probably wouldn't want to stay in said lodgings unless you yourself were part canine and could handle the smell of marked territory.

Other similarities between children and dogs:
-Immediate heartbreak if attention is given to one dependent and not the other
-Demanding a diaper change/to be let out right as the last three minutes of your season finale is airing.
-The incredible ability to refuse sustenance all evening until the exact second the first bite is being raised to your mouth at the dinner table, at which point spontaneous starvation is triggered and feedings can under no circumstances be postponed.
-Vomiting on your carpet rather than the tile floor that is a mere 2 inches away.
-Refusing any beverage that is not the perfect temperature. (Yes, my dog is that picky. Tepid water, water shared with another dog, water that has been sitting a few hours - all completely unacceptable and less appealing than even death by dehydration.)

The greatest similarity between my dog and child which I've noticed thus far is during my son's crawling and trying to walk phase. Now that he is mobile, I am having flashbacks to the dog training phase and realizing that I already have in place all the vocabularly needed. "Leave it!" "Don't chew that!" "Back away!" "Waaaaiiiiit." And my favorite - "Come here," while holding out a piece of food to coax him across the room.

My son apparently also believes himself to be on a similar playing field with his four-legged counterpart. Around four months old, I discovered that really the only difference between dog chew toys and baby chew toys is who happens to be sucking on said chew toy at a particular moment in time. They both squeak. They both crinkle. They both get ratty and gross. They both get lost for weeks, only to be found randomly by an unsuspecting bare foot in the middle of the night. I try to keep the toys separate, but no matter how much effort I put into it, I always find my son sucking on the dog's rope toy and the dog batting around my son's water bottle.

Probably my greatest difficulty I face in keeping my baby out of my dog's things is keeping him out of the dreaded dog water and food tray. For at least 2 months now, my son has been undeterred in his determination to splash his hands in the dog water. We put up a gate between the kitchen - where the dog tray is kept - and the living room, but somehow he still manages to pull a Houdini and get to it a couple times a week. He will happily sit and smack the water, splashing himself and everything around with grimy, dog drool water. Now, most recently, he has discovered the dog pellets. And, gosh darn it if he doesn't try to pop them like Whoppers! He will eagerly grab a handful, tilt his head back, and like any male sitting on a sofa watching football, try to pop them in his mouth.

Thankfully, my ever-vigilant eye has caught him in time to prevent consumption of these pellets, but I know it's only a matter of time before he succeeds. Maybe when he starts integrating dog food into his diet he'll also begin barking and scratching behind his ears with his toes. And now that my son has taken to throwing Cheerios on the floor for the dog, I wouldn't be surprised if very soon my dog starts walking upright on her hind legs and calling me "Mom."

Believe me - at this point, NOTHING would surprise me.