We're Getting a Dog...or: What am I, Crazy or Something?

As my kids and I walked to school, they plead their case.

"Please can we get a dog?"

"Mommy, if we got a dog, I promise I would take care of it."
"Every one else has dogs."
"Please can we get a dog?"

Aunt Susan got a dog and she doesn't even like dogs."
"Please can we get a dog?"
"You never gave us another brother or sister, so you owe us a dog."

Yes, just about every time we walked to school, that's what I heard.  For five years. (Although to be fair, my daughter alternated between wanting a dog and wanting to get her ears pierced.)
I might add that walking to school takes a good twenty-five minutes, during which we pass innumerable dogs in Central Park, enjoying the off-leash laws. Thus innumerable chances for them to say "Isn't he cute?  What about a dog like him?"  And this was when the dogs were mangy, or smelly.  Or resembled my sixth grade science teacher who looked like he never brushed his hair.

Twenty five minutes of begging, three days a week (that's subtracting for the days when they beg  for ear piercing, or a DS, or an iPod...or even the occasional day off from begging, when we just talk.), starting some time mid-way through kindergarten and lasting until Fourth Grade.  I think that adds up to 4455 minutes of begging.  So a few weeks ago, we finally caved.  We're getting a dog.

My husband would have given in years ago.  I think the only reason he didn't was so that he could use the idea of the dog to get what he wanted out of the kids.  As in "If you can't even be responsible enough to make your beds every day, than how are you going to be responsible enough to have a dog.?"  Or "If you can't even handle cleaning up your room, how are you going to scoop up poop?"  Or even "If you can't even massage my tired shoulders, help me avoid phone calls from my mother-in-law, and ensure that I never, ever have to go see a chick movie again, how are you going to take care of a dog?"

Really, it was an all-purpose invocation.

I was the hold out.  I never had a dog.  I never had a cat. The only pet I ever had was a Guinea Pig named Honey, who lived in the basement and, quite frankly, was pretty boring.Plus, he smelled. The way I saw it, I was the one who was going to be home.  Meaning I was going to have to feed the dog, take the dog out, scoop the dog's poop.  In short, as the only one in the family who didn't want a dog, I'd be the one really having a dog. I envisioned long walks in freezing weather, waiting for the pooch to poop.  Long nights being awakened by scratching or whining.  I imagined my Jimmy Choos being chewed...and I don't even have Jimmy Choos.

But I had already caved, so there was no going back. Instead, I set some hard and fast parameters:

1. No puppies.  The dog was to be between 1 and 2 years old.  If I wanted another kid, I would have had another kid.

2. No peeing in the newly renovated apartment. Whatever dog we got had to be housetrained.

3. We had to meet the dog and be sure he liked kids.

4. No aggressive dogs.

5. No heavy shedding dogs.

6. No yippers.

and perhaps most importantly:

No Breeders.

It's not that I have anything against purebred dogs or breeders.  It's just that there are over 300,000 pets on Petfinder alone that need homes...or else.  If my home and my peace  (and my hypothetical shoes) were going to be destroyed, at least I could tell myself I was doing good while everything was going so badly.

Amazingly, there really are dogs that fit my criteria on Petfinder.  Everyone else in the universe is looking for them, too, however.  So every time I called, the "good dogs" were gone.  And then I saw Bentley.  That's him up there. 

He's not housetrained.  He's four months old.  He barks. He marks.  And he's in Arkansas, so we didn't even get to meet him.  Still -- look at that face.  Someone left him on the side of the road when he was ten weeks old.  Kinda breaks your heart, doesn't it? He meets virtually none of my criteria...so we picked him.

The rescuer who found him grilled me for an hour:  would I treat him nicely, did my children know how to behave with a dog?  Was I ready for the expense?  Would I feed him organic food?  Would I make sure he brushed his teeth?  Honestly, you'd think I was getting a baby from an orphanage.

She wanted to make sure we were the right family, she said.  Because even though she already has four dogs, and fosters seventeen (and no, that's not a typo)  more, she loves Bentley, and would keep him for herself if the family wasn't perfect for him. He's sweet, she says.  And smart.  And fun. And did you scroll up and look at that picture again?

And that's why I'm driving with my husband and children to New Jersey on Saturday morning, to wait in a Park and Ride parking lot for Bentley.

I know he'll pee on my new carpet.  I'm sure he'll chew a hole in my new upholstery.  But I'll still be able to invoke him to my kids:  "How can you leave your room such a mess when your father and I just got you a dog?"  But what I hope is....that I love him, that he loves us, and that we really are the right family for him.  Because all joking aside, that's what Bentley deserves -- and we do too.

Original Post to NYC Moms Blog.

Nancy Friedman blogs at From Hip to Housewife.  She has an essay in the forthcoming anthology "See Mom Run."