I don't like pets in the house.
Whew! There! I said it and I feel a little bit better. Also a little bit ashamed, but that's why we're here - to work out our issues.
Honestly, I grew up on a farm, and was brought up to believe that animals belong outside. I have no problem with dogs, or cats, or chickens, or ferrets, or whatever - it's just that I believe animals were created to live in the great outdoors, and people were created to live inside whatever types of semi-sophisticated shelters they can construct for themselves. Now, I realize in some societies, animals just share the same general space as people and kind of go wherever they please, but this is middle America, and I am a middle-class stay-at-home mom, so I can choose whether I want animals living with me or not. (Please forgive me, Mrs. Gross, my seventh-grade English teacher - I split up the "whether or not" instead of keeping it all together. The grammar nut in me should be ashamed.)
I can choose whether or not I want animals living with me. There, I feel better.
We used to have dogs. Two of them, to be specific. And they lived in the house with us. One was an English mastiff named Zeus, who was very cute, quirky and affectionate, despite his enormous eventual size. Zeus was my husband's favorite dog. Those guys were buds. The second was a chocolate Lab named Bear, who was tiny at first, and looked unfortunately like a rat as a puppy. But he was a sweet dog and was bred from a line of great hunting Labs (never mind that neither my husband nor I hunt). So these two dogs lived with us for about seven months before I found out I was pregnant with our first child. In typical early-pregnancy hormonal fashion, I freaked out about having dogs and babies in the same house at the same time. Would it cause our baby to have allergies? Would it be too unsanitary? Would I have time to walk/feed/bathe my pets anymore, or would I be too busy, well, mothering my child?
Before you know it, my fevered first-trimester brain had decided, irrevocably, that the best course of action would be to get rid of the dogs. And by "get rid of," I mean "find new and loving homes for." So we placed some classified ads in the newspaper and began interviewing potential adoptive families for our pets. My husband was very sad when we found a home for his beloved Zeus. I even saw him shed a few tears as he gave our pet his final bath before his new owners came to meet him. Chalk it up to one of my many wifely mistakes - I should have known how much he loved that dog. Zeus was special. But my wonderful man could see that his barely-sane wife could not handle the pressure of expecting her first baby and coping with a 120-pound
OK, I'm back. *sniffle* Letting go of Bear was less emotional, as he wasn't my husband's favorite; he was sort of my dog, and he hadn't been with us as long. We originally got him because we figured Zeus needed company. We sold Bear to a teenage boy whose longtime hunting dog had recently died of old age. I could see the excitement in that sweet boy's eyes when he and his dad came to meet Bear. He maintained his Mr. Cool persona, as teenagers must do if they ever want to look their friends in the eye again (never mind that none of his friends were there - somehow they would find out! Because teenagers know everything, right?). But I could still tell he really liked the puppy, and adopting Bear would help ease the hurt of losing his own dog. So I sent Bear to a farm outside a small town not far from where I grew up, to learn how to hunt pheasants with his new boy. I would drive past that farm sometimes in later years, and I would always think of Bear - how old was he now, did he turn out to be a good hunter, etc. - and hope that he was happy.
Zeus's new family did write us a postcard one time, telling us that Zeus was getting along well with their other dogs, spending his days lying on his own couch on the porch, being fat and lazy as mastiffs tend to do. His new home was about an hour's drive away, in another state - not a place we passed by on a regular basis. I'm sure he's gone on to doggy heaven (or whatever) now, since a mastiff's life span is only 10-12 years.
Our family had a brief stint with a maladjusted, hyperactive beagle named Molly, since my middle son became obsessed with beagles one year. Plus, my oldest child and only daughter was petrified of dogs (a little terrier walking down our street got loose from its owner's grip one day as we were playing in the front yard, and chased my daughter, screaming in terror, up our front steps and into the house), and I determined that being so afraid of dogs was not healthy for her. So we caved in to the beagle beggin's. Sadly for everyone except me, Molly got loose from her chain in the yard one day and was never seen again. We did look for her at the animal shelters and the local Humane Society, but never found her. On one of those trips to look for her, I brought home a black Lab named Speed, which I told myself would help the kids get over losing Molly. (I can tell you're shaking your head at my boundless stupidity right now.) As you might expect, replacing one maladjusted dog with another just created more mess and more chaos at home, so back to the Humane Society went Speed as well.
Now, before you call the ASPCA on me, I promise you that all our dogs were well taken care of when they lived with us; it's just that I am not a super-accomplished wife and mother, and it was hard enough for me to take care of my three kids while my husband was in residency - working nights, weekends, holidays, and everything in between. Somehow, training and caring for a dog was not high on my priority list, and only compounded the desperation to survive that we all lived with during those five years. (On a related note, did you know that according to a 1997 study, 29% of medical marriages end in divorce? That statistic climbs up to 33% if you're a surgeon, which my husband is. I'm sure the numbers are even higher by now.)
While I heave a deep, shuddering, cleansing sigh after having confessed all this, let's get back to my original topic. For myriad reasons - my own neurotic tendencies, the pressures of raising a young family, my husband's demanding work hours - we have never succeeded at owning a dog. By "succeeded," I mean we've never obtained a dog and then kept it till it died peacefully of old age. As I mentioned, I am not the best housekeeper, so the added mess of an animal in the house really tipped us over the edge from "somewhat dirty, hasn't been dusted or vaccumed in awhile" to "probably breaking several health codes." Consequently, I've decided that I will never again own a house dog. If we ever get a dog again, which I doubt, it will have its own house outdoors or in the garage, and be able to run around, drool and shed freely, and chase squirrels and birds to its heart's content, without dirtying up my house.
That being said, we did get my daughter a blue parakeet when she begged for one. Its name is Emma. Perhaps the depths of my craziness are only beginning to be plumbed...
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