Having A Dog

As I'm sure all my readers know by now, I have a dog, I bought him about a year ago. In fact right around Halloween, I gave up my costume money for my dog. When I bought him I promised myself so many things. I promised myself I would never compare having a dog to being a parent. That I would never let him get away with things. That he would always just be a dog. Well, less than a year later and I have broken all of those promises I made to myself.

I should have known I was going to break all these promises immediately, but denial is a sweet nectar to our guilt. Just a couple days after getting Otis, my dog, I was at a friends house and we were eating dinner. I had Otis on my lap while I ate. And one of my friends turned to me and said, "Oh! Your that kind of dog owner!" I tried to deny it, explain it away, no he has a lot of energy right now, he's not potty trained yet, I don't have a leash.... excuse ... excuse ... excuse. I felt the truth of the statement, but I kept telling myself, he is JUST a dog, I am master. I own him.

The first promise to slowly start eroding away was my promise to not compare owning a dog to parenthood, but its hard when all the mother's around me compared my dog to their kids. I promise, I didn't start it! Perhaps, it was a way I could connect with friends, my friends who are married with kids while I am single with dog. (Sounds like the beginning to a sad story.)

So, as all my peers started to call me Otis's mother so did I. I will confess it was painful, but liberating. I will influence this creature's habits from now on out! But if you take this first step, you can never let him be JUST a dog again. Which began my downfall into letting him behave very un-dog-like.

At first this wasn't a problem because he had some other dogs in the house, but when they left he began some curious habits. First, when I would sit down to eat at the dinner table he would jump on the chair next to me and sit there too. Step one, thinks he's human. After doing this for awhile I started to find he had jumped on the table, step two; he knows he's not human, so what is he-cat?

I'm happy to say I killed that habit (after a looong time), but I couldn't bring myself to tell him no to jumping on chairs-it was so cute! Which is where my final downfall lay, letting him get away with things.

I tried to tell myself that I had to be stern, if you want your dog (or child) to create good habits, you have to be consistent and I was always one of those single people who couldn't believe it when parents weren't consistent with their kids. Now, I understand. Sometimes,

I catch Otis chewing on pillows and I look away and think "Yes! A moment to myself!" Sometimes he jumps on the couch (which he is technically not allowed to do) and I think "How cute!"

My conclusion is this; I am a terrible parent, but the same as any other. I am completely biased towards my creature and think all others suck. Mess with my stuff (dog/child), you mess with me, angry mama bear.