Ane Speaks – puppy edition

The kids want a puppy. I want a puppy. The holdout is the Webmaster, who has a million reasons/excuses for why we shouldn’t have a dog. But the bottom line is that he just doesn’t want a dog. A cat he would be fine with, but we can’t have an indoor kitty and the last thing we need is to have to explain to the kids why the raccoons mauled up their cat. And we have some very territorial cats in our neighborhood who routinely beat the snot out of each other. And I am mildly allergic to cats – though not allergic enough to prevent me from having one as a pet.

I would be fine with a cat. But we need something more – sturdy, y’know. (Cue Lilo & Stitch here.)

The kids met an adorable, laid back puppy at Costco on Tuesday, a black lab/golden retriever blend (according to his owner) who was just as soft as could be and allowed the kids to pet him. Tad was especially enthralled, repeatedly saying, “Aww, puppy sweet!”

Later that evening, I was driving Ane to the library for storytime, when the puppy subject came up again. I told her that she needed to pray for a puppy, since that’s pretty much the only thing that’s going to change her father’s mind. We started talking about various dog-related issues, including the fact that Phoebe, Ressis and Oddball’s miniature schnauzer, is not coming with them this time – she will be kenneled back home while they are here – which upset Ane terribly. I kept telling her, “Seeing your cousins is MORE IMPORTANT than seeing their dog,” but she refused to be consoled.

I then had to tell her a hard fact – dogs CANNOT go everywhere with you. “When we go back to Disneyland, Ane, if we have a dog by then, the dog is not going with us,” I told her.

“Why not?” she cried.

I explained that only service dogs get to go everywhere with their people – because they are special trained dogs that are needed by their owners. And since Ane is not blind, deaf, autistic or in need of any kind of service animal, that would not be the kind of dog we get. Ane was not pleased with my answer and began to rant about how she wanted a trained dog – even though I pointed out that we would train a dog.

At this point I called the Webmaster on my cell phone, and asked him, “Why am I always the one who gets stuck with these conversations with our daughter?”

Then Ane yelled loudly from the backseat – loud enough for her father to hear over the phone – “You are always telling me that I am SPECIAL and I want to have a SPECIAL dog!!!”

“Shoot me,” I muttered to the Webmaster, who was laughing his butt off and couldn’t reply to me at that moment.

Let’s just say that the puppy discussion is on hold… again.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 12:46 am and is filed under Children.
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