Kids, Dogs, Love and Doing the Right Thing

Thank you to Pup Fan and her post over at I Want More Puppies for bringing this article to my attention.

We are discussing this recent article at Slate, where the author suggests that it is impossible to still love your dog when you have kids. Let me state unequivocally that I disagree with her conclusion. As a new mom myself (though my child is 9, not an infant) who has had dogs for years, I can assure you, I am quite capable of loving my dogs just as much today as I did 4 months ago, before our daughter was in our lives.

However, I am in no way surprised that this writer feels the way she does. Everything she tells us about her life with the dog pre-children lets us know that she will stop loving her dog once there are kids involved (remembering that this essay is about 600 words long and therefore short on real details and shorter than this post).

First, her dog was not something planned, not something thought about, not something wanted until it was seen. It was an impulse gift from her boyfriend to her. He wasn’t even a fiancé at the time, as far as we can tell. And instead of seeing the dog as a commitment (as I talked about last week) she saw it as a romantic gesture.  And as I have mentioned before, we tend to value things we are just given less than things we earn or even have to wait for. Instant gratification (especially of a want we didn’t know we had) does not tend toward lasting devotion. In fact, we often place much less value on things that come easily.

Second, her dog was not her dog, he was her substitute child. As she says herself at the end of the essay, if you are considering getting a dog as a “starter” kid, don’t. Dogs are not kids. Let me say this again, as someone who views her dogs as part of her family- dogs are not kids. If what you want is a child, and instead you get a dog, as soon as you have an actual child, the dog will pale in comparison. (At the same time, if what you really want is a dog, don’t have a kid, or get a cat.)

Third, in all the activities we hear about them doing with the dog pre-child, not one of them is training. The dog is a Border/American Eskimo mix. Besides being adorable, this is a high energy, highly  intelligent breed. They dealt with the energy by going to the beach or the dog park, but it doesn’t appear they nurtured the dog’s intelligence, or did any training with him.

So here we have this poor dog who entered a home not because he was wanted but because he was cute, and who was not allowed to be a dog. Instead he was someone’s substitute  child until real children came around. This was a situation that was set up to fail.

There might have still been some chance at things working out if the author and her husband had not made certain other choices.

There is the decision to not do the simplest things to improve the situation. If the dog really is throwing up on a regular enough basis that it feels part of the routine, perhaps a vet visit is in order to find out if there is a food intolerance or allergy. Or perhaps the dog just needs to be closed away when the kids are eating (because little kids can’t help but drop food).

And finally, they have three children 4 and under. If I had three children, none of whom were completely potty trained (they don’t trust the 4 year old to wipe himself), I wouldn’t be able to keep a goldfish alive, let alone spare the energy for a dog. It begs the question- why do they still have the dog? (For the record, we have Junebug because of an almost similar situation. A family with three kids 5 and under thought it would be fun to get a puppy. It turned out they didn’t have time for her so they surrendered her to the shelter, and less than a week later, she was home with us.)

As a comparison, let’s also take a look at another article from Slate, written seven years ago, about giving away the family dog.

There are a lot of similarities in the situations. The dog joined the family on a whim by one of the adults involved, without consultation with the other. (In this case, the other was also quite allergic.) When kids came along, the dog got less attention from the adults. Often, this is made up in attention from the kids, but this was a dog who was not a fan of toddlers and simply removed himself from the room when the kids bothered him. (Which really is exactly what I would want the dog to do.)

Knowing they weren’t giving him the time and attention he needed, they engaged a dog walker as often as they could afford, but recognized it really wasn’t enough. So when it came time for the family to make a big move, the parents stepped up and did the responsible thing- they rehomed their dog.

They felt guilty about it (or at least the author of the article did; her allergic husband might not have) because she felt like she was breaking a contract she had made with her dog. Yet she also realized that this was the best decision not just for her family but for the dog as well.

The situations presented in these two essays are very similar, and both have titles meant to get page views (because that’s how an online publication pays its bills). And yet, I have a lot more respect for the author of the one written in 2006. Why? Because she didn’t just complain. She didn’t stop caring about her dog’s health. She realized the situation was no longer right (perhaps had never been right) and took action to make it right.

Other possibilities for why these situations turned out the way they did:

First dog for both families- they haven’t been through the pain of losing a pet and then choosing to get another one. I think it is that choice to bring another pet into your life after having lost one that really signifies the desire to be a pet household, not just a household that has a pet.

Only dog- when a dog is an only dog, it is dependent on its family to provide companionship and attention. Having two dogs is actually less work than having one because the dogs keep each other company and entertained.