I am thinking way too much about it, but I am struggling with this whole “having a dog” aspect of my life. It’s one of those things, a detail you hear about someone else and you don’t give it much thought. “They have a dog,” you might think, “how nice.” And that’s the extent of it.

And then you get a dog. Maybe because you see all the other people who have dogs. Maybe because (in theory) it seems like something good. Maybe you want to teach your children responsibility (the WORST possible reason to get a dog) maybe because you want companionship (which is generally true of some folks but not of someone with six children, I am not really looking for more entities upon which to spread and share my love).

So that is the first question in your guilt-ridden mind: why did we get a dog? What was I thinking?

Here is the truth: I’m not really sure.

Last December, I was in the midst of Christmas and life and travel, a big trip to Boston to film The Gist. And this magazine comes in the mail, Garden and Gun (my favorite!). And somewhere in the magazine is a picture of past covers and it has this puppy on one cover and this puppy is just gorgeous.

“STOP. IT.” I can hear you saying this. “You did not seriously get a dog because you saw a cute dog on the cover of a magazine? Are you KIDDING ME?” Wow, you sound a lot like ME when you talk to me that way. Or maybe that’s me? Taking me to task?

So yes, I got it in my mind that this dog, this puppy, was just so cute and we needed this puppy in our life. Mind you, no other person in our household had any interest in a dog. Not at this point. Not before I introduced the whole idea to everyone. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I would say, “if we got a DOG?!” Um, sure, they would reply, before heading back out (again) to the basketball court. Or the backyard soccer field. Or out on their bikes to roam the neighborhood.

And then I’d go back to this vision of my sons with their dog, them sitting around in the backyard singing Kumbaya with Ethan on lead guitar, one of the boys petting the dog, everyone else seated around the dog just waiting their turn to pet the dog and love up on the dog and wait until the dog’s next feeding to be the person to measure out the kibble and feed the dog.

Wow! What a vision it was. I had an agenda — we NEED A DOG — and basically there was no convincing me otherwise.

Deep down I must have known how crazy I was. I hid my dog-searching ways from close friends, people who I knew would talk me out of it (or try to. HA HA! There would be none of that!). Because they knew my history and my clean-freak ways and also my inability to cope with chaos. That last one I don’t think is true and I don’t think they think that, but I do think for someone with five boys I have an amazingly limited ability to handle madness. I can handle five boys and a toddler girl. A dog? Not so much.

My history with dogs in our family is long and complicated and I thought “this time” would be different. I was going about this from a different angle, you see. That would be all the difference.

A brief recap: our first puppy ended very traumatically. I didn’t want to end on that note so I found another dog to take the first dog’s place. That ended badly because we basically got a feral dog. Then we got another dog (a few years later) that was not a good fit. Ironically I kept that third dog after it was the cause of Henry’s broken femur and seven weeks in a Spica cast — mostly because I was the root cause of that because I was the one who threw the ball that launched the dog that yanked the tether that broke Henry’s leg.

So all of that behind us, and this, THIS would be the time it all worked out. Right?

Except, here we are, six months in and I feel like I’m pulling my hair out.

And the worst part is: this dog? He is perfect. Like, if ever a family was going to have a dog, this would be the dog.

He is sweet and kind, he just wants to be with us. He thinks he IS us. In his mind he’s one of the children, just wanting to eat his food off a plate like everyone else. He wants to sit on the couch and watch How It’s Made like everyone else. He wants to get in the bathtub at bath time like everyone else.

And it’s driving me nuts.

Because here’s the truth, the deep dark secret dog lovers know but don’t tell you because honestly it just doesn’t bother them: a dog is like a child who will never grow up.

Today when Paul and I were hashing all this out on the phone, I told him, “Honey, it’s just that I am realizing this dog will  never learn to scoop out his own food or open his own kennel or open the door to go outside when he has to pee.”

Why do people get dogs? Because they love them. And I’m ashamed to admit that while I love dogs in theory, the practical side of owning a dog just doesn’t agree with me. It just doesn’t. You should see the look on my face as I type that. I am squishing up my mouth because the guilt and shame? It’s overwhelming.

What kind of a person doesn’t like having a dog? A selfish perfectionist, right? A non-fun-loving Mommy Dearest right? A tired-out overwhelmed woman with a bunch of kids?

I don’t know. The point of all this is not necessarily that we’re not keeping the dog. It’s that I have to make peace with my list of Pro’s and Con’s of Having a Dog. The one that looks like this

Con’s

• hair in house
• mud on outdoor cushions
• barking
• whimpering
• wants to get out of kennel the minute he hears me up in the morning
• follows me around everywhere
• we can’t eat dinner because he’s trying to jump on table
• yes, we can train him but that takes work
• I’d rather spend that time reading a book or painting my back door
• the back door he shredded because he is always trying to come inside
• and the list goes on

Pro’s

• Two of the boys really like having a dog
• Isabel tolerates the dog
• I can save face by not getting rid of the dog

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