Amos the Awful
When we first brought Amos home, he was a godsend. He slept and slept and slept, as puppies usually do and the boy had a little adjustment to do to his crate. I’m sure I blogged about this at one point and I am swallowing my pride now.

A week or two later he developed kennel cough, which ravaged his little lungs and stirred up our household for a week or so. Since then, things were never the same. He is a demon puppy of sorts, by my standards. He’s the high-strung, high-energy, loudly-barking aggressor of the two bassets, who is obsessed with mouthing anything carrying our scent and has left crate training a very clear, distinct nightmare. We’ve consulted all spectrums of obedience, from organized puppy classes to the Dog Whisperer and those who think his techniques are barbaric (although in personal experience, his methods have certainly worked the best), however, at nearly three-weeks shy of his one-year birthday, he cries every night in his kennel.

There are any number of issues that need to be resolved, but pinpointing and correcting them is a task in and of itself. We exercise him, but probably not regularly enough due to the increasingly cold weather. Who knows if we’ve both accurately asserted ourselves as alpha dogs over him and although we try to retain a regular schedule in the evenings, it’s probably nothing rigid enough as Ryan can head to bed anytime within a four hour span.

As a result, I am woken up every two to three hours, when my brain can no longer shut out his painful cries. I blog about this at 3 a.m. because, this week especially, this is what my life has been like: I am lying awake thinking of ways to solve this problem, stopping short of sending the poor pup to a glue factory, while Ryan eventually rolls over and says something like, “Oh, has he been crying?” I can only hope for such fatherly deafness.

More often than not, I find myself thinking of my boss, who must be sitting up on the other side of the twin cities, cradling her own newborn and although I’m sure I’ll piss off a few parents in the process by saying this, I have to ponder why parents think that human parenting is such a glorious endeavor above this experience.

Although many parents would argue that dog parenting and human parenting are nothing alike, I’m starting to think otherwise. Yes, while I can write this while my little one sits in a box downstairs and those conditions would never be acceptable for humans, there are several parallels. Sleeplessness for one. Frustration is another. Irritation at spousal deafness is yet another. The knowing of when to follow the rules and when to show compassion and striving to maintain balance and regularity while keeping one’s prized personal possessions intact and free of drool.

Until Amos, I prided myself on dog parenting skills (having produced a six-year old who is the model of dog-civility and sweetness) and now, at 3 a.m. I am seriously questioning them. So why on earth would I try to practice these skills with an actual human baby? Sure, I’ve heard the reasons spew from parents’ mouths about how babies are different, children change your lives, they’re the best and worst things you’ll ever do and I simply can’t understand until I have one. I get that. Or maybe I don’t. But although I don’t love him any less, I do admit that I have occasional pangs of regret for bringing this little crap-storm into our household and it just seems terribly irresponsible for me to convince myself I might think differently about a human being. As my coworker said, "Who ever wants to grow up knowing they were the kid that was just too much for mom and dad?"

posted by paula 4:33 AM