“Are our dogs really annoying?” I asked Josh recently, “Or am I just really crabby?”
It didn’t take him long to respond that it was probably more the latter.
“Shit, I was afraid of that,” I said. “I’m just so tired all the time.”
I’ll defend myself briefly by adding that in addition to having one wonderful human child who is almost two, we have a three-year-old Husky-Collie mix and a six-month-old Lab mix. Juna and Jack are, for the most part, very sweet dogs. I recently told my mom how crazy they’re driving me and she said, “You always say that, but they seem so nice whenever I’m there.” Clearly, I must be having a particularly bad bout of “feeling possible.”
Yesterday, when I was out walking the dogs, I came upon a fellow brave soul who I see on the path almost every day. I think her name is Julie. Every time she sees my dogs, she goes crazy, especially over Jack. This time, she went so far as to say that he’s the perfect dog—exactly the type she would want if she got another.
I’m not even sure exactly what kind he is—we suspect that he might have some Pomeranian in him. He looks like a Lab, but he’s kind of runty and has been known to speak his mind with the dreaded yippy bark. He redeems himself with his willingness to cuddle, which can be quite relaxing on a cold winter’s night.
I’ve been making a conscientious effort to appreciate the dogs and have more patience for their antics. At times, this can be difficult, especially when they wake me up in the middle of the night to go potty. Hello—I’m a sleep-deprived pregnant woman, and I have to get up to pee enough times myself, thank you very much. And once I drag myself to the backdoor to let the dogs out, I quite often wind up sitting at the dining room table, eating cereal and surfing the web in the dark. I’m not a great sleeper.
So, like I said, they drive me crazy, but I’ve been trying.
Tonight, Linnea and I were working on the laundry downstairs for ten minutes or so. She is becoming surprisingly helpful with both laundry and unloading the dishwasher. I’m praying that she will retain the desire to please her mother as she moves beyond toddlerhood.
When we came back upstairs, Juna and Jack were devouring the carcass of a rotisserie chicken, right on the good living room rug. For once, I caught them in the act! Scolding dogs is entirely pointless unless you can do so while they’re still engaging in the undesirable behavior. For example, if I find a chewed-up shoe but there’s no dog in sight, I’m shit out of luck (this is not a hypothetical example). The guilty dog would have no idea what was going on if I went and yelled at her.
Since they were right there in all of their guilty glory, I shouted, “Bad dogs! Leave it!,” and the they backed off their prey. I shooed them outside and started to pick up the chicken. Linnea was in the background, parroting me with glee, “Bad dogs, bad dogs, bad dogs!” The dynamic duo had retrieved the bird from the kitchen trash can while we were downstairs—let me add that neither of them is capable of actually retrieving something that we want them to retrieve—and there was other garbage strewn about the kitchen as well. As I stuffed everything back into the trash can, I muttered under my breath, “Oh, great. Just great.” And from the other room, I could hear Linnea saying, “Great, dogs, great!”
Needless to say, this episode left me feeling quite humble. Hearing my own words from the mouth of a two-year-old, I recognized how crabby and old I sounded. Was this the kind of behavior that I wanted to model for my child, and more importantly, is this the way I react to her when she’s the one causing trouble? Lord, help me.
So, I don’t have any great insight here, except that I am tired, and I may need more naps and a better sense of humor. I’ll try to remember to laugh as I scrub the rug tonight—not only to remove the smell of lemon rotisserie chicken, but also to work on the ink stain caused by Juna’s pen-munching session this afternoon.
*****
I Want to Know
Do you have any pets?
If so, what’s the most exasperating thing they have ever done?
Been there. Felt that. Oh wait, I shouldn’t use past tense. I feel that. And you’re a better dog owner than me. No matter how pointless it is to scold, I still do it because I’m so dang frustrated. Right now we’re trying to get her to stop eating (and then throwing up) E’s chalk for her easel. What on earth is tasty about that?! I do feel I have neglected her since becoming a mother. I hope that once I start running and walking again, our bond will be rekindled. For now, she feels like my husband’s dog. He walks her. He feeds her. She therefore goes to him for all her affection which only serves to make me feel annoyed and rejected.
Yeah, I’m real mature. Sigh.
Rose, you and I clearly have a few things in common. Reading this comment made me feel a little better. I’m not the only one! I agree that walking and/or running with your dog will probably help. I walk the dogs a couple of miles most days (my only source of exercise right now!), and that generally puts me in a good mood.
When I first got her, I was training for a marathon. I took her to dog parks all the time. She was walked at least twice a day. We dressed her in people clothes in the evenings and took pictures of it for fun.
I just have such a limited supply of emotions, energy, resources (financial and otherwise) that she’s just not a priority the way she used to be. Take the dog to the dog park or the kid to the children’s museum…? Yeah, she never wins that one anymore.
Things got really bad this fall when she went from being the perfect dog to take out and about because she very happily and sweetly would stay tied outside while we grabbed a quick hot chocolate or something to being the mean looking dog who barked out of insecurity. Once she became less portable, I started to feel resentful of her. I really liked being able to integrate her into E and I’s day as we wandered through town and checked out the playground. I wish our dog felt the same way.
Why wouldn’t you want a rug that smelled like lemon rotisserie chicken? We could take that concept somewhere!
BTW, Emma? You take it all more seriously than it needs to be taken.
You have dogs that ate a cooked chicken. I had a team mate who once ate a frozen chicken. All of it. Keep it in perspective.
Anyway, if you didn’t take it all more seriously than it needs to be taken, you wouldn’t be you.
For Rose, strangely, dogs often go after what they need. Doggie might have an acid stomach.
Now, if we can just get Larry to buy into the idea of marketing the rugs…
Of course I take everything too seriously, Dad!
Very Interesting idea about Rose’s dog, BTW. And totally disgusting about the guy eating the frozen kitchen.
Mmm, yes. These are the possibilities I mull over when talking myself out of having a dog in Hong Kong. Digging chicken parts out of the rug, not ideal. Trips downstairs in the middle of the night, not gonna happen. And I’ve never really wrapped my brain around scooping up warm doggie pooh with a plastic bag. But that’s just me. Yet I still have the occasional, very strong, urge to throw caution to the wind and cab it over to Hong Kong Dog Rescue to pick up the first fuzzy little wide-eyed love ball I see. My friend/neighbor has an adorable 4-year old HKDR pooch who makes serious eyes at me when we go walking and greets me like I am one of the world’s greatest humans, which I of course find quite endearing and which contributes to the aforementioned urges.
Thus Emma, in conclusion I would say you take the good with the bad. You take J&J’s naughty chewing and balance it out with their nuzzles. And at least they’re not totally nuts, like Kitty — we all know it could be much much worse:) I’ll never forget when we ran her to the point of heat exhaustion and she passed out in the cornfields. Sweet Jesus. I thought we’d killed her for sure.
That’s all. Good luck. Maybe the crankies have more to do with the bun in your oven than the hounds…
Thanks for making me laugh.
Good visual with the Kitty story (for those not in the know, Kitty was the sweet but slightly deranged dog that my family had when I was in college). Oh, and you definitely get over picking up the poop, though yes, it’s disgusting. The things we do for our babies!
I love this! My husband and I have two pit bull mixes – Puck and Pilot. Puck is 5 and he took about 5 years to become vaguely manageable on a leash. We got Pilot this summer, and she is a pretty-well behaved 75 pound 8-month-old. We live in the city, so every time the dogs have to pee, it involves a walk – complete with leashes and pulling and tails wagging. When I am in a good mood, I love them. I love that they force me to go outside even when it’s cold, I love the enthusiastic greeting when I come home from a long day of work. But when I am stressed or tired or emotional (seems to be happening a lot lately!), my tolerance for the pooches plummets. An example: the other night, I was having a late dinner by myself and the puppy was down in the basement. I was pretty sure all the doors were shut, so I wasn’t worried. Apparently, I was wrong. The pup had gotten my favorite childhood stuffed animal off the shelf from the upstairs study, brought it to the basement, and emptied all of the 30+ year old pellets of stuffing from my beloved childhood friend. I nearly lost my mind at the poor beast, failing to remember that it was I who left the doors open upstairs and who left a puppy alone in the basement.
My husband and I are expecting our first human child this summer, and now I occasionally freak out about my ability to manage two STRONG 75 pound dogs and an infant with a soft head. Glad to hear I’m not alone!
Oh, boy. You can definitely relate, Carrie! Dogs really have no sense of what is an heirloom, do they? Things will change a little when you have the baby (congrats!), but I’m sure you’ll make it work. It can definitely be a challenge to do the one stroller, two dogs walk, but I do it!
We don’t have any dogs, but lord knows these cats we have in the house drive me crazy. Granted they aren’t waking us up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, they do wake us up by fighting with each other. When they fight they make the most awful sounds and it usually ends up with a thud thud thud down the stairs. Not only do they do that during the night, they also do it a couple times a day. Sammy is usually stalking Nermal and she hates it, so they fight and it annoys me so bad! Not only is that aspect annoying but the puke all over the place all the time is also very irritating. Sammy thinks hes human and so he gets up on the counters/table and eats anything you leave out. Nermal likes to go in mine and Skipp’s room and if we forget her in there she pee’s on my clothes only, not Skipp’s ever, just mine! Drive’s me crazy, yes I do know its our fault for forgetting her in there but still! Sorry to rant on so long, but cats are just as bad! Its probably a good thing that Skipp won’t let me get a dog!
Oh, no! At least my dogs don’t pee on my clothes, I guess! I think those two particularly cats are probably more problematic together than apart.
I have a cat named Harley. When she’s mad at us for being gone for a weekend (and for the whole last month of my pregnancy and first month with my newborn) she poops just outside the litter box – right next to it. It’s SUPER annoying! Yeah, at least it’s not hidden somewhere around the house. It’s not something we’ve been able to train her out of, she just gets over it herself. Cats are crazy.
I’ve only lived with a few cats, but yes, they seem to pose their own challenges. I have a mental block about litter boxes–I want nothing to do with maintaining one! There’s something about the smell that really gets me. That said, it sure would be nice to be able to leave for a weekend without worrying a whole lot about the pets!
Hey Mo, move the litter box over just a little…
I know it’s not behavior you want, but I couldn’t help laughing at your daughter’s imitations of you scolding the dogs. Very funny.
I have two cats, and the most frustrating thing they do is jump up on the kitchen table and counter. They’ve gotten more brazen about this lately. It used to be I could just yell at them and they’d jump down. Now they wait until I make a move toward them. The punishment is always the same: love. I scoop them up and hold them until they’re struggling to get away.
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It sounds like you have some pretty good cats on your hands if that’s their worst behavior!
Aww! Sorry to hear about the tiredness and need for a sense of humor
But I think you have that part! As for your daughter and laundry and the dishwasher? Score! 
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I know–I am sure that helping Mom will become less appealing, but for now, it’s pretty sweet!
Emma, I think you’re entirely entitled to be grumpy – after all, you are pregnant and sleep-deprived and raising a toddler! My 2 cats annoy me constantly, not to mention the hunter ‘gifts’ me with big dead rats just outside my door–I screamed so loud when I saw one last week when I was on the ground looking for my keys (typical) that the neighbor came over and offered to shovel it into the trash…but they are adorable and lovable most of the time…
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Oh, God. Nothing worse than dead animal “gifts.” The dogs have caught multiple rabbits, and it’s SO disgusting!
Ooh, I cannot tell you the number of times I have had this conversation with my good friend. We both get annoyed with our dogs and then feel guilty about it. I am also starting to consciously figure out what we want our toddler’s discipline to look like and I look at how I get my dog to do what I want (yelling) and feel like I should write a big FAIL on my forehead in permanent marker. I don’t want to yell. I don’t want to be annoyed with the dog. So like you, I am reevaluating my attitude and how I am going to react to the dog (and a toddler) not behaving as I wish they would.
Great post. I am new to your blog. Glad I stopped by.
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Thanks for stopping by, Alecia! This parenting thing (kids OR dogs) is not always easy, is it? Glad I’m not alone!
First of all, tired? Yup. Always. And, yes, we have two cats. And they are currently hard at work destroying all of our brand new furniture. ‘Tis driving me absolutely mad. Good thing I love them so much or they might have already gotten the boot
Ugh. Destroying furniture is the worst! I’ve had to throw out several nice rugs over the past couple of years. So frustrating!
Getting a dog is like having kids. If you can’t or don’t want to put the time in, deal with the trials and tribulations, and even the joys, don’t do it.
I’ve had many dogs, but it’s always tough losing one. A person can only take so much.
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You’re totally right. It is very similar to having kids! I thinks it’s worth it, but it’s not always easy!
I’m just catching up after finish Divorced Before 30. Loved it. We have two dogs and I definitely don’t appreciate them enough or enjoy them enough….It seems I enjoy them less since we had our son. (He’s 6 months.) Our retriever mix has a habit of eating socks, underwear and burp clothes while we are asleep. She swallows and then throws up baby socks and hats.
What happen to Tucker?
Glad to have you here, Jennifer! It sounds like you have your hands full.
Sadly, Tucker was developed pretty serious fear-aggression around children. We hired a doggie behavioralist and tried putting him on puppy Prozac before making the heartbreaking decision to find a new home for him a year and a half ago. He has a great new home with a retired man who lives in the country. They adore each other, and I get e-mail updates regularly.
Oh, that sucks…but I’m glad it wasn’t the alternative (death). I thought Tucker was a younger dog so I was hoping nothing tragic had happened. It is of course tragic when you have to make a decision that you did. I’m glad you were able to find him a good home. That’s how I adopted my first dog (a husky), from an owner that couldn’t keep him. One of the best decisions I ever made.