30 april 2006
The Puppy Thing, part I
by Linda Breitag
Listen to an audio version of this MOMbo essay.
Well, we got a puppy. Sophia spent the year between seven and eight constantly revisiting the theme. Just when we thought she’d been distracted or lost interest, the puppy would resurface in her nightly teeth/jammies/story/bed routine. “Mom, if we don’t get a puppy, I’ll die,” she would moan. It didn’t help that we chose that year to read “Because of Winn-Dixie,” the story of a young girl adopting a goofy but lovable mutt who shows up out of nowhere one day, and ends up changing lives. Or that my sister and my niece adopted two miniscule baby dachshunds and let them be unbearably cute all over the place.
Even their poops were cute. As proof of how faithfully she would take responsibility for her future charge, Sophie ran to clean one of the tiny cute poops off the kitchen floor. She reminded me of this for weeks.
In private parental moments, her father and I would mull over the matter. (“You’re TALKING ABOUT ME!” Sophie would yell accusingly from another room, as if a) she’s the center of the universe and we couldn’t possibly have any other topic between us, and b) it’s somehow not normal for parents to discuss this third being who is completely dependent on them.) Ray and I had both lived with dogs growing up, and we agreed that it was a good thing in many ways, a thing we wanted for our daughter. A good thing, yes, but never quite what you’d call a convenient thing.
Our friends kept saying “It’s like having another baby.” That was an event Ray had declined awhile back, since his first daughter was already having her own babies. And, for heaven’s sake, it couldn’t be that intense. But, just like with having babies, you can’t really know what it’s like until it happens to you, so we finally decided to take the plunge while Sophie was home for spring break. Of course, it was a very protracted plunge, since getting a puppy these days can be a cyber-adventure of major proportions.
There weren’t many “rescue” puppies available, and in any case, they were all of rather large parentage, something we’d decided against. Then our friends told us a harrowing tale of the out-of-control cat who had entered their lives. They hadn’t wanted to teach their child that if you had a problem with someone, you just got rid of them. So instead they discovered firsthand how many behavioral and psychic pet professionals are out there, and how much they charged, and in conclusion our friends strongly recommended we go the breeder route. Yet, as someone who couldn’t bring herself to have an amnio even at an “advanced maternal age,” the whole scene felt a little creepy, like demanding the “perfect” child. Weren’t you just supposed to pick a puppy out of a cardboard box outside the neighbor’s barn, with a plywood sign saying “Free puppies to good homes” hanging charmingly askew in a Norman Rockwell fashion?
So we hemmed and hawed, checked out library books, gasped at puppy prices, while Sophie grew increasingly desperate to actually hold a puppy, a real puppy, in her arms and have it lick her face. Finally, one day in a coffee shop, I looked up just as three happy dogs trotted past on leashes held by a friendly-looking man. I bolted out the door, started a conversation, and a week later Sophia was holding the sister of one of those three dogs as it licked her entire face with great intensity.
The whole transaction did involve multiple emails and phone calls, a hefty check along with significant paraphernalia purchases, and a day’s drive, but some things never change. Things like that wiggling puppy body greeting us each morning, and that little puddle of piddle underneath.
I guess it is a little like having a baby, after all.
—Linda Breitag is a mom and a musician. She's a regular contributor to MOMbo. Her podcasts can be heard here. |
