We have a dog and today she gets her own post. Lucky dog! I would not consider myself an animal person. Sure horses are majestic, dolphins are lovable, puppies are cute, tigers are mysterious and who wouldn't want to wrap their arms around a panda bear and get a bear hug (assuming of course that the panda wouldn't rather rip your head off). I never thought I would own a pet. They require time and money. They get sick, need shots and grooming , they need exercise and to be fed and watered and they poo. That is the number one strike against any pet! If someone would invent a pet that didn't poo I'd have ten of them. Well maybe not because you often can't take them on vacation either and it is inconvenient asking someone to look after your pet while you are gone and paying for them to be boarded is out of the question.
Children, as any parent knows, change you. I had five of them including a baby whose diapers I was still changing when some chemical imbalance effected my brain causing me to look at the KSL classifieds for a dog. Spencer was nine and had been asking for a dog for years. I held my ground. Emma had just turned five and would be starting kindergarten the next year. She was the one that changed my heart as well as the timing of the dog. I had thought to myself that maybe we would get a dog when I was done potty training my children so that, you know, there would be less poo for me to clean up. Well, that may have been true, but by then Emma would have been in school all day. And I know that she would likely be happy to carry a dog around all day if she had the chance and if she were to be given the chance to do that we would be needing to get a dog before she started school.
Puppies, I knew, are adorable. But--they chew on things, scratch things, they cry at night and require training of all sorts including being trained where to poo. I do not like potty training my children, I did not relish the idea of training a dog. I had never done it before and I wasn't really interested in learning how. So I was drawn to a small, cute, fluffy, house trained three year old shih tzu named, Sadie. I did some research and discovered they are friendly, sociable dogs who need regular grooming, but don't shed and are supposedly "hypo-allergenic." Taylor, I knew could have been my ticket out of any pet ever. He is allergic to everything. We knew that he reacted to labs, but he seemed fine around other dogs. So, one brisk November afternoon I packed up the kids and told Destry that we were going to "look at" a dog. We needed to see if Taylor was going to be allergic and see if we liked her. The dog we went to "look at" came home with us.
While there was an adjustment period for all of us, especially me; there were even a few days that I wanted to take her back, I have no regrets. She has become part of our family. I worried that the kids would lose interest and she would become my responsibility, not that I didn't know that she would be my responsibility to begin with. My kids bathe her, feed and water her, clean up her poo and let her in and out of the house. Do they do it without being reminded, no, but they still do it. At first I did the bathing, but as the kids got older, they took that over. We all love her. The kids have had to learn how to treat animals; they are not toys. Sadie is quite patient with them, but she is not the type of dog who can be mauled and bugged relentlessly. She gives them a warning growl when she doesn't like what they are doing to her and has even nipped at them a few times. She and the children got reprimanded when she nipped. She is playful and protective. She doesn't like rough play or fighting. When someone is sick she sits with them all day long.
She also has some sense of time. We don't usually take her with us when we go places, but we always take her to my mom's when we go for dinner on Sundays. Somehow she knows when it is time to go. It doesn't matter what block we have at the time or it is stake conference. She knows when it is time to go to grandmas. I think she looks forward to it as much as the rest of us do. She gets so excited to get in the car and when we are a couple blocks away from her house she goes nuts. Oddly, I think my mom enjoys having her. A few weeks ago I took her with me to pick the girls up from school and now she knows when it is time to do that and she has to come with me every day. She also knows when it is time to get in her kennel because she is not coming with us--not that she gets in it willingly every time. She has become another loved member of our family.
Children, as any parent knows, change you. I had five of them including a baby whose diapers I was still changing when some chemical imbalance effected my brain causing me to look at the KSL classifieds for a dog. Spencer was nine and had been asking for a dog for years. I held my ground. Emma had just turned five and would be starting kindergarten the next year. She was the one that changed my heart as well as the timing of the dog. I had thought to myself that maybe we would get a dog when I was done potty training my children so that, you know, there would be less poo for me to clean up. Well, that may have been true, but by then Emma would have been in school all day. And I know that she would likely be happy to carry a dog around all day if she had the chance and if she were to be given the chance to do that we would be needing to get a dog before she started school.
Puppies, I knew, are adorable. But--they chew on things, scratch things, they cry at night and require training of all sorts including being trained where to poo. I do not like potty training my children, I did not relish the idea of training a dog. I had never done it before and I wasn't really interested in learning how. So I was drawn to a small, cute, fluffy, house trained three year old shih tzu named, Sadie. I did some research and discovered they are friendly, sociable dogs who need regular grooming, but don't shed and are supposedly "hypo-allergenic." Taylor, I knew could have been my ticket out of any pet ever. He is allergic to everything. We knew that he reacted to labs, but he seemed fine around other dogs. So, one brisk November afternoon I packed up the kids and told Destry that we were going to "look at" a dog. We needed to see if Taylor was going to be allergic and see if we liked her. The dog we went to "look at" came home with us.
While there was an adjustment period for all of us, especially me; there were even a few days that I wanted to take her back, I have no regrets. She has become part of our family. I worried that the kids would lose interest and she would become my responsibility, not that I didn't know that she would be my responsibility to begin with. My kids bathe her, feed and water her, clean up her poo and let her in and out of the house. Do they do it without being reminded, no, but they still do it. At first I did the bathing, but as the kids got older, they took that over. We all love her. The kids have had to learn how to treat animals; they are not toys. Sadie is quite patient with them, but she is not the type of dog who can be mauled and bugged relentlessly. She gives them a warning growl when she doesn't like what they are doing to her and has even nipped at them a few times. She and the children got reprimanded when she nipped. She is playful and protective. She doesn't like rough play or fighting. When someone is sick she sits with them all day long.
She also has some sense of time. We don't usually take her with us when we go places, but we always take her to my mom's when we go for dinner on Sundays. Somehow she knows when it is time to go. It doesn't matter what block we have at the time or it is stake conference. She knows when it is time to go to grandmas. I think she looks forward to it as much as the rest of us do. She gets so excited to get in the car and when we are a couple blocks away from her house she goes nuts. Oddly, I think my mom enjoys having her. A few weeks ago I took her with me to pick the girls up from school and now she knows when it is time to do that and she has to come with me every day. She also knows when it is time to get in her kennel because she is not coming with us--not that she gets in it willingly every time. She has become another loved member of our family.
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