My parents brought home a wiener dog puppy when I was 8 years old. That was a pretty happy day for the Pope kids. Right up there with the day we went to see Return of the Jedi or when my parent bought the Thriller album. We (my parents) have had dogs ever since. I’ve been a parent now for almost 15 years and we’ve never had a dog. I’m pretty sure every kid, ever, wants a dog (or at least some sort of animal that isn’t an older brother who hasn’t discovered deodorant yet). For several years, my girls, Sydney in particular, have been making subtle and not-so-subtle requests for us to “adopt-a-pet.” This usually looks like this:
Syd: “Dad, can you do the password on the computer?”
Me: “Why”
Syd: “So I can look for dogs.”
Me: “But we aren’t getting a dog.”
Syd: (after looking down and a little bit sad) – “But I just wanna look, they’re so cute!”
Me: (typing the password) “You can look, but we aren’t getting one.”
Syd: (several minutes of searching later) “Dad, I found the perfect dog for us and it’s only $100 and it’s hypoallergenic and it’s housetrained and it’s just a few miles away and it needs a home and it would be perfect for us!”
Me: (slowly limbering to the computer) “Yep, it’s cute, but we’re not getting a dog.”
This is a conversation we’ve had, pretty much verbatim, roughly 300 times over the last three years. About half the time I pick up my phone there’s an open web page with pictures of adorable dogs that need homes with important statistics like vaccination status and current progress on house training. (These are two items I hope my daughter factors into her dating research as well.)
The efforts to convince the parental units that we need a dog have ramped up for some reason over the last few weeks. (this is strangely related to some cat-sitting that my daughter did over the holiday) Now this is easily the #1 topic at our house and she’s successfully co-opted all of her siblings as demonstrated by this signed document I found on my pillow a few nights ago, which is literally, a declaration:
You’ll notice that the two signatures that matter aren’t there just yet. Let’s be real though, it’s only a matter of time. Our kids have learned that their parents can certainly be beaten into submission through repeated “reminders” of what the kids “need.”
We’ll hold out for a while, no doubt, but I suspect one day one of those internet puppies is going to have an accident in our family room and I’ll be cleaning things up because I eventually, I usually do what I’m told…
2 comments:
You need to block this post so boy-Jesse can't see it. He still thinks we need a dog.
Can't wait to meet you, Daddy!!??
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