Yeah…We Got A Dog

The day started like any other day. We woke up late and a tad hung-over from the previous night’s party with friends.

We ate breakfast and broke-up 13.6 fights between the kids.

I wrote a love note to the wife.

Then we decided to go to my wife’s second home, Ikea, to look at lofts for the boy’s room since he needs desk space.

After a couple hours of crying and listening to the boy say, “Oh, I want that bed, and that desk, and can I get a chair that wheels around, and I could put my trophies on my desk and move them when it’s time to do homework, and please daddy, please mommy?!”

But unfortunately we left without the purchase.

Then I made the mistake of a lifetime. Feeling bad that we got the kid all hyped-up and let him down, I whipped into the pet store right next to Ikea so we could let him pet hamsters and look at fish.

Twenty minutes later I find myself in a small “petting room” waiting for a dude that works there to bring us a puppy to play with.

Twenty more minutes later my wife, son, and daughter are literally clasping their hands together as if in group prayer and begging me to let them take the doggie home forever.

I gave it a good fight, I really did. But I lost and I lost hard.

When we first moved to Chicago three years ago we got a damn cat. Jasper.

Almost two years ago we got each of the kids a fish. Then one died. So we got another.

Then a few months ago the boy “had to have” a hamster. When I wasn’t looking the wife bought the little bastard a hamster.

Now...a Cavalier King Charles dog named Marty.

But, I’m going to look at the positive side of this. I’m going to focus on the many things young Marty and I have in common.

• If he’s not bathed regularly he stinks and leaves his musky scent all over the furniture. I do too…
• Currently the cat’s scared out of his mind, so one could say he scares pussy away. I do too…
• He was bred and we have his thorough pedigree chart. I guess in a way I was too…
• This furry bastard loves to have his belly rubbed nonstop. The dog does too…
• I’m going out on a limb and saying I’m pretty sure the dog doesn’t like to wear pants. We all know my feelings on those devil leg covers.
• And, I’m not going to lie, if you throw a ball near me I’m definitely going to go for it and bring it right back to you.

Now, if only I could figure out how to make my ass wag like a dog’s tail and have my wife whistle at me and talk to me like I’m 8 months old.



WARNING: You Are Experiencing Children

Most mornings I watch the Today Show in the a.m. Not sure why, but I do.

The other day I’m metro-sexually ironing my clothes, watching the Today Show while thinking to myself, “damn they have a ton of drug commercials on here.”

Naturally…this led me to wonder, “wouldn’t it have been great if my little bastards were born with a warning label like those seen on drug commercials?

All parents would have to agree– hell yes it would. Here’s how my kids’ labels would have read…

(Background image – perfect family, wearing J. Crew clothes, beautiful kids running around an immaculate yard, very clean dog leaping around playfully with the children who are getting along gleefully as the parents enjoy wine in peace, while wearing stylish clothes, and sporting huge smiles because they know they’ll have intense, uninterrupted sex later that night)

Meanwhile, the following is being read by some out-of-work, douchebag ex-dj announcer guy:

“Children are not for everyone. Children may cause you to want to harm mass groups of people for no apparent reason. While pregnant with children you may notice a very drastic impact to your sexual relationship causing you to spend more time than normal naked, in a corner, crying and rocking back-and-forth.

While “making” children you will enjoy yourself. This will be the last “enjoyment” of your life.

If living with children you experience excessive drinking, yelling, kicking of inanimate objects, mumbling to one’s self, hatred of Caillou, hallucinations of Barney taking shots with Big Bird, or the increased love of silence, please consult a doctor.

Those experiencing children should stay away from those without children as it will help increase their unrealistic belief children are great.

Children may cause you to lose excessive amounts of sleep, eat while standing, repeat yourself excessively, and create intricate lies as to why you “must go to the store alone, RIGHT NOW!”

Children are evil.

You will eventually label your children as “cock-blocks.”

While living with children you may puke, experience diarrhea, always have a runny nose, buy stock in hand sanitizer, contemplate muzzles, experiment with shock-collars, and find yourself repetitively walking into walls.

If you find boogers, dried food, spilt milk, un-flushed toilets, skid-marks on underwear, and sheets being used as Kleenex in your house then you are currently experiencing children.

Children can kill you.

(End with the kids quietly building a fort out of rubber blocks while the parents continue to kiss, hug, sip their wine and retire to the bedroom knowing Susie and Mark are safe to play on their own.)

The Dog Days

The Spring is such a wonderful time of year. It brings the people-folk out of their houses. The runners start training in mass for races, bikers create that cloud-like blob along early-morning road sides, and dogs with their owners begin making longer journeys around the neighborhood.

I was on a run yesterday when I passed a number of people walking their beloved furry animals. I couldn’t help but remember just over a year ago when the wifey and I made the collective decision to bring a dog into the family.

And….scene:

It was late fall, the family had just moved from Virginia to Chicago to be with me after waiting months to sell the house. We had already bought a cat and everyone was settling into a good mid-western big city routine.

I’d just finished reading the amazing book The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (yeah it’s an Oprah Book Club book but I didn’t read it because of that…you wanna fight about it?!!!). I suddenly got a hankering to bring a dog into the family thinking in my head, the kids would love growing up with a furry bastard around the house.

It was like being a teenager all over again…I wanted something that I knew was no good. I wanted to bring a dog into a three bedroom, one bathroom house, already equipped with one brand new cat, a backyard no larger than a postage stamp, long winters hovering around 0 degrees, and a wife I knew damn good and well would not walk this beast.

We went to the SPCA as a family. We met dogs. We walked dogs. We played with them on shit-covered sheets of ice. We finally found the “perfect” one! Five minutes later the SPCA worker was quickly removing him from us after he tried to eat my daughter’s face off.

Two days later we brought home a large doggie. We loved that bastard. But holy shit no one in his short life had even begun to train him. And when he stood up on his hind legs, he was the same height as my beloved wife at 5’1”.

This is the same wife who for the first time since she was 14 years old, wasn’t working a job. She was staying home with our children, in a new city, hundreds of miles from any family and friends while her husband was gone from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. during the work-week.

We named him “Odie.” Most of his short life in our home he spent chasing the cat, leaping on counters, tackling our children, trying to eat my wife, and sparking calls from the wife to me at work that sounded a lot like “I can’t handle the two kids, this winter, and this damn dog!!!”

I took him on walks. I read up on training and implemented the tips as best I could. I set up an appointment with a trainer but had to wait a month for a new class to start. But every day I came home it was the same. House trashed, the dog crated, wife frazzled and crying, and kids swinging from the ceiling.

A few days later I came home to the wife in tears again and mumbling, “I just can’t handle it!”

I asked her to put the kids to bed, I grabbed the dog, put him in the car and headed back to the SPCA. It was the worst feeling I’d had in years. I knew I was taking him back to prison after experiencing our wonderful family. A lot of other people would have made a different decision, but I knew we were not the ideal family for this dog that had lived in our house for four days.

Later we explained to the kids that I took Odie to a farm to be with tons of other dogs where they could run around and have so much fun.

We kept track of Odie on the SPCA website and a week later he was adopted and never returned. Looking back at those pictures the wife and I miss him. We wished he had found him at a better time in our lives.

But…we’re confident he’s enjoying his life on that farm with all those dogs…