Family, Life Lately

Never Say Never {Or, Why We Currently Have a Dog in the House}

Before we got married, there were three things I told my husband we would never own: 1) a gun, 2) a motorcycle, and 3) a dog.

Well, I’m still holding out the for the motorcycle. (For the record, I lost the gun battle years ago.)

To start with, I am not a dog hater (or animal hater)–as a child, I wrote an impassioned persuasive essay to my parents trying to convince them why they should buy me a puppy (which I need to ask my mom if she still has lying around), I often volunteered to take neighbors’ dogs on walks, and a few years ago, I was the one who made the suggestion that Matt and I visit Best Friends Animal Sanctuary to do some volunteer work for one of our vacations together.

HOWEVER, as an adult, I have never wanted to OWN a dog–for starters, I’m not a great housekeeper, and the thought of having to clean up dog hair in addition to everything else I already have to force myself to clean up was just not a pleasant thought. Also, I seem to have developed a highly sensitive nose when I was pregnant with my first child that has never quite gone away, and to me, dogs are STANK-EE (meant to be said with a slight twang, though I’m neither a Southerner nor a country singer). In fact, I felt so strongly about NOT owning a dog as an adult that I wrote a passionate persuasive blog post all about why we should NOT get a dog. (Apparently I need to rethink the effectiveness of my persuasive essays.)

For years though, Matt has slowly been trying to wear me down.

At first, I had airtight arguments–our apartment didn’t allow pets! We didn’t have a yard! We were both working full-time and had no time to give enough attention to a dog!

Then, once we moved into a house, I’ve been using the excuse that we simply can’t afford a dog because we just added a new human to our family that we’re still paying hospital bills for, thankyouverymuch.

But then, Matt’s grandpa fell and broke his hip a few weeks ago.

And he has a dog.

And the fact that his grandpa would be out of the house in rehabilitation for awhile meant that relatives were having to drive up to the house three times a day to check on that dog.

And Matt asked me if I’d be willing to take in that dog as a service to his grandpa.

AND I FOLDED, YOU GUYS.

So, that is why we currently have a shih tzu (you’d better believe I had to look up the spelling for that) dog in our house named Minnie that Raven follows around everywhere and mildly terrorizes with too much attention (though she is very, very gentle with it for the most part, thank goodness). And with how fast she’s formed an attachment to the thing, I can already sense a huuuuuge problem in about 5 weeks when we’re going to be returning said dog to Matt’s grandpa (even though I regularly explain to Raven that Minnie is not ours to keep).

On the bright side, the dog has proved to be an EXCELLENT form of entertainment for Raven, which has provided me many an hour over the past couple weeks of uninterrupted time to do the dishes, cuddle the baby, or even read a book in peace (without constant requests to play ponies or for me to “hey, hey, hey! look here, Mom!”.

So I guess I’ll take all the positive while I can, and try to ignore the fact that the dog has now peed on our bathroom rug and pooped on our bedroom floor and somehow seems to prefer me over anyone else, though I’m the one in the house who pays her the least attention (other than the baby).

But actually, in all honesty, I’ve been surprised by how smooth a transition it’s been overall–other than the two potty accidents, Minnie’s actually pretty well-trained, and since she weirdly seems to prefer me, she actually listens to me pretty well, too. It also really, really helps matters that she doesn’t shed any more than we do, and that she’s only stinky if she’s super close to you (as Matt’s been pretty good at bathing her every week).

So all in all, life as a temporary dog owner isn’t so bad, at least not as bad as I thought it would be.

Now if only we could convince her to eat a brand of dog food that wasn’t the most expensive…

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