First Time (Dog) Mommy

As we announced on Facebook yesterday (being the hip Gen Xers that we are), Mike and I are going to have a baby! Mike's most recent post and my own impending motherhood have got me thinking about the ways that getting a puppy kind of broke me in as a new parent. Some people say getting a dog is good practice for having a child... and indeed I was able to practice being a crazy, neurotic, Supermom on poor Russell.

Having a dog was something I'd always longed to do, but tried not to think too hard about before it was a realistic option. Kind of like when women of a certain age start to come down with baby fever but know the timing isn't quite right - I'd ogle puppies on the street but try to push it quickly out of my mind. So when Mike suggested it was time - time for us to get a dog of our very own - I was over the moon. And then I went totally overboard.

Picking out a puppy awakened the neurotic first time mommy inside me. If I was going to have a dog, he was going to be the healthiest, happiest, most well trained and well behaved dog on the planet. He would be perfectly groomed all the time. He would know a wide variety of cute tricks in addition to all of the basic commands. He would come to work with me and lay quietly by my side until quitting time. He would volunteer his time on the weekends by comforting old people in nursing homes and sick children in hospitals. He was going to be perfect, because anything less would make me a big, huge, failure of a dog mommy!

First, of course, I had to figure out what to feed him. If you ever want to explore an issue that's more emotionally charged and controversial than abortion rights or race in America, take a gander sometime at the topic of what to feed your family dog. If you want to feel the wrath of a thousand angry strangers, go to a message board about dogs and say that you feed your dog Iams. I dare you. I'm poking fun, but truthfully, The Dog Food Project is a great resource and I do recommend it.

Once I'd figured out what to feed my young pup, I OBVIOUSLY had to get him into the best possible puppy kindergarten as soon as possible. Yes, there is such a thing as puppy kindergarten, and god help you if you don't get your puppy in there during its "optimal socialization window," which some say only lasts until 10 weeks, because if you don't... well. God help you. Since Russell was already 8 weeks when we got him, I had great anxiety about managing to get him into a good school as soon as possible. Luckily, some friends of ours were looking for a puppy kindergarten too, so we all enrolled together.

Russell wasn't even 9 weeks when we got him into school - whew! At the beginning of our puppy classes, we owners all sat in a circle and went around introducing our dogs and explaining where they were at in terms of potty training, obedience training, and overall behavior. There is the same simmering sense of competition in a puppy kindergarten as I imagine there is among parents of human children. Some people in the circle smugly point out that their 8 week old hasn't messed in the house once, and others confess in a near-panic state that the dog is 10 weeks old and still pooping EVERYWHERE IS THAT NORMAL WHAT DO WE DO???

The reality of puppy kindegarten is about as laughable as it sounds. Teaching 2 month old puppies to sit, lie down, and come is about as constructive, and absurd, as teaching 6 month old human babies to read. But oh, we were earnest. I was all wound up about how well Russell was doing in class, whether he was playing nicely with the other puppies during free time, whether he would potty during potty time or just pee on the classroom floor like some of those other mouth-breathers in class, whether he was focusing properly, whether the rowdy dogs in class were bad influences, whether we had good communication with each other. Meanwhile, Russell's thought process was something along the lines of PUPPIES PEOPLE PEOPLE TREATS PEEPEE TREATS TREATS PUPPIES POOP!

The sleep deprivation and all-night feedings of human babies also have an analog in puppy raising, and that is in the insanity of housetraining. Russell was two months old when he came to us, and it took an astonishing three months to get to the point of not having regular accidents in the house. The gist of our method was taking him out often enough that he couldn't possibly have to pee in between scheduled walks, and making sure that he pottied while we were out there. On top of it, we lived in the city and were not allowed to use the yard for a dog potty. So we are talking more than three months of walking the dog down the street every 2-3 hours, starting at roughly 6am and ending around 11pm. I can recall walking down the street in the early morning, in my pajamas, in the rain, crying.

Next I fixated on the concept of the bond between dog and owner, and it became an obsession for me: how good was my relationship with Russell? Did he trust me? Was he bonded to me? Suddenly it wasn't enough to have a puppy who behaved well, we had to have a good relationship! But how would I KNOW? I would take him on long walks, let him off leash, call him to me casually although secretly I was testing his love - would he come? would he purposely defy me? totally ignore me? I would feel a surge of relief every time he came back to me, and when he didn't, I would feel a panicky sense that our bond was slipping away.

Eventually, when Russell was closing in on a year old and starting to act more like a friendly family pet and less like a crazed, furry piranha, I too settled down. Over time I realized that I could make mistakes and still my dog would be basically all right. And that in actuality I probably did not have total, Godlike control over his personality, which was the notion that really put me into a near-paralytic state of fear in the early days. I accepted that he would probably always pee on people's feet, and probably always hate puppies, but the world wasn't going to come to a crashing halt because my dog was not perfect.

I would like to think that Russell broke me of my worst, most Crazy Mommy tendencies, and that because of my experiences with him I will more quickly find a path to some kind of intuitive, even-keeled motherhood role. But even as I write that I can hear an internet full of experienced moms laughing at me. Don't worry, I'm sure I will join the chorus sometime next year.