My kids think I’m the most evil mom on the planet because we don’t have a dog. They are deprived. Their poor scarred little psyches are barely wobbling into adulthood, and I am to blame.
Well guess what, munchkins? DOGS DON’T LIKE ME. Which means, I’m under no obligation to like them.
Want proof? My first little doggie was a chihuahua named Chi Chi. Tiny. Trembly. Perfect for a two year-old living in El Paso Texas to cuddle whilst lounging across a giant tractor inner tube in the backyard. (I have no idea what we were doing with a giant tractor inner tube in our backyard in southern Texas. We were on an airbase. And it’s not like it snows a ton that far deep into the American South. Maybe it was an airplane tire. Yeah. Makes more sense).
Anyway, somewhere there is a picture of 2 year-old me cuddling Chi Chi, and smiling brightly. And then in the next picture? No Chi Chi. He was just gone. Without so much as an Adios, muchacha. I mean, I’ve got my suspicions. You’ve seen the Taco Bell commercials, right? You’ve also seen Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? The werewolf in that thing? Totally the Taco Bell chihuahua on steroids. Or, as we who knew him REALLY know, Chi Chi, pumped to the max.
He didn’t even leave a note.
There was also our Beagle, Sandy. Cute as a button. Bought him from a puppy farm. Wiggly and warm. I loved to hold him too. Only this time it was while lying back on the tulip-covered hill next to the bushes and chainlink that surrounded our yard in Maryland, trying to keep the little guy from wriggling out of my grasp. He was adorable.
He lasted a few weeks. Tunneled through the bushes to freedom, my parents said.
Psh. I know better.
There was also Satan’s German Shepherd who lived next door and used to regularly scare me over the fence, where I left bits of myself behind as I fled her razor-sharp teeth. Not to mention all the military police dogs that used to growl menacingly at me whenever I passed them on base in Germany.
Then you had our own German Shepherd which my husband bought a few months after I gave birth to our last child. Don’t even go there with me. Postpartum-woman and the sly poop-machine? Not a good mix. I never became the Alpha with her. Or the Beta. I might have occasionally been the Omicron. But most of the time I was Null. Except when she left giant offerings for me on my white berber. Sigh.
Finally you have my husband’s family’s dogs. Honey. I truly believe my husband’s family lived in the Bermuda Triangle for dog owners. EVERY dog I ever met in that place was . . . how shall one say it . . . brain-stem deprived. I have probably just offended my in-laws. I don’t mean to, because my in-laws are wonderful. It’s just the way it was. I mean they had one dog that used to bark until she gagged herself (a tiny mixed-breed thing), and used to turn the corner at the bottom of the stairs by running headlong into it and rebounding in the direction she wanted to go. Then they had the Dalmatian who knocked my mother-in-law’s furniture over with its tail, and gave her welts the size of Nebraska. The Spaniel started out nice, but very quickly turned into a grumpy old man–even though she was a girl–and growled at everyone. Except for my husband, who she decided was in fact the Alpha Male and upon whose shoes she peed in submission EVERY TIME we walked into the house.
There was a little thing that left body parts behind every time it stood up, and a slightly possessed Pomeranian who hated me and attacked my shoes every time I so much as walked by. None of this bolstered my confidence with any breed.
So, you see? I have not exactly had great experiences in animal ownership, or even animal association. I must not have the gene. I’d really like my kids to learn the responsibility of caring for a pet, and to know the joy I never knew of having a devoted little friend waiting for them after school each day. But I’m not sure it’s going to happen.
Well, I suppose my children can buy dogs for their own kids once they get married and have a few. Kids. And then when they need a dog-sitter? Well, I can always take the little varmints up to the Bermuda Dog-angle for a spell. See how that works out. If nothing else, when their animals come back all possessed, my kids might begin to understand. A little.
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