Honey, Your Brother Is A Dog
...And He's No Marley
A guest blog
by Kate Stevenson
Since we have one kid, and everyone warned us she’d be a spoiled brat without a sibling, we decided to get a dog. The dog would divert attention from the kid yet be way cheaper and easier than another human, we figured. Also, the dog could be a playmate for MB.
Jock came to us about 1 month later.
“Why doesn’t the puppy loooove me?” MB sobbed. “He does love you,” I lied. The puppy crawled under a table. MB bent down to look at him. He silently bared his teeth. I googled his breed. Turns out this type had a reputation for barely tolerating children. Before converting into purse-dogs, they had been bred to kill rats. I wasn’t sure, but I had a sinking feeling the puppy thought my daughter might be one. He liked to chase her with intense concentration in his eyes, as if hunting.
“Kind of like a little brother,” I said hopefully to my husband.
And he barked. A lot. Like a disorder. I would run from room to room, looking out the windows, trying to find the cause. “There’s NOTHING!.” I’d yell. “The next time you start barking like that, there’d better be a man in a balaclava in my front yard!” Jock would stare at me balefully and go to lie on his cushion.
Still, he was doing his job, which was to distract attention from the kid and remind her she wasn’t the centre of the universe, we reminded ourselves. “He’s doing a good job at that!” I said pluckily. Then The Labrador We Should Have Chosen appeared in my mind. It was golden with huge gentle limpid brown eyes. It gamboled over a field of flowers, MB clinging to it’s back, laughing her head off with joy. When she stepped on its paw, it licked her and smiled as if to say DO IT AGAIN. It loved her and slept by her bed every night. It did not think she was a rat.
Just then Jock ran past, growling. MB followed him, crying, “But I just want to hug you!” Jock shot under the table. MB bent down. He bared his teeth. In my mind, the Labrador looked at me pityingly. It had the compassionate eyes of the Madonna. “You’re screwed,” the eyes said.
3 am.
BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK? BARK BARK BARK BARK?
A cold feeling started to break over me. I was not in control. The husband and I proceeded to have the kind of fight you can only have at 3am in the morning. Underlying it all was the sense of betrayal. Wasn’t the dog supposed to be EASIER? “We haven’t even had him neutered yet! God knows how much THAT’s going to cost!” I cried at some point in the fight. I stalked out into the living room. Jock was in a frenzy, barking his little head off. And suddenly it hit me. It was 3:30 am, and we were both up. We may as well have had a newborn.