I love dogs and cats. In my house, growing up, it was cats. Friends and family had cats, dogs, and everything in between. Animals make me happy, and furry domesticated beasts are amazing. But, there is a zero percent chance of a cuddly critter finding itself in our home today. The reasoning is two-fold. First off, we live in a fairly urban setting. Our yard is the size of a postage stamp, and the section that actually has grass is even smaller. Fence? Nope. So, a dog is out right off the bat. As I’m informed regularly — by the other four people in our house who petition me daily for a furbaby — there are dogs out there that are so small as to be happily sequestered away indoors most of the time.
But for those times Fido needs to be outdoors, he or she would need human supervision.
I know, I’m such a curmudgeon. It’s why I led with my love of four-legged friends, which is quite genuine. But I’ve seen what dogs do to a house like ours, that isn’t really set up to accommodate one. Endless trips in and out the door, pleading with your furry friend to “go potty” in dulcet tones, cleaning up the results of potty with plastic bags, paying for doggie daycare, and so on.
Sorry, let me back up.
I would love to own a dog … if we lived on a farm, or some grand estate, ringed by a fence so that said dog could be released, on its own via a doggy door. Which brings me to reason number two why we’re not getting a furry pet. All three of my children are allergic. I would like to finish that last sentence with 42 exclamation points to drive home the lunacy of even having to make this argument, but there it is.
Every time we visit friends and family with cats and dogs, the kids roll around with them, rub their faces in the fur, and promptly look like a trio of patient zeroes from a horror movie about something contagious. So, if you were going to suggest getting a house cat as a way around my disinterest with asking a dog to go potty, this is why that wouldn’t be great.
Of course, there are the debates around so-called hypoallergenic beasts, but I haven’t even begun to whine about our busy lives.
Any parent reading this knows how bananas the daily schedule can be. And I see no need to have a psychotic break over keeping track of a pet that’s never not a baby alongside a trio of humans that are no longer babies, but are still very much in need of adult supervision.
Get a rodent, you might be saying. Chinchillas, they’re so cute! Did you know they can live for TWENTY YEARS? Our friends got a hamster that only extracts itself from a mountain of wood shavings between approximately 1 a.m. and 1:05 a.m. No thanks. Don’t worry, I’m not a total monster. I agreed to a Betta fish that was supposed to float around for, oh, two years. It’s going on five, and I still get to clean its tank every month.
