Was Zum Teufel?!
Tues Feb 19 – During this smash hit week of burning embassies, pissed off Serbs, and the overrated, red-carpeted spectacle that is the Oscars, today I found myself feeling very happy that dogs are not children. Why? Well, because my human children are just barely out of adolescence and I can still feel the pain of slogging through those troubled waters. And also after reading stuff from this blog.
Honestly, after raising two children myself, Will’s and my decision to raise some other bitch’s offspring instead of our own was probably the smartest thing we’ve ever done. I love you, Stella!
Wed Feb 20 – This fine day’s news starts off with an apology. An apology for my continued rant about children. I must say that it’s nice living in a neighborhood where there aren’t that many. In Queen Anne, our Seattle neighborhood, there were baby strollers and screaming brats EVERYWHERE and it was just fucking annoying. Way more annoying than seeing dogs everywhere. Apparently, I’m not the only one who feels this way (I did not write this; I just happen to find it very humorous):
1. Puppies are cheaper than babies.
The going price for babies on the Internet is as much as US$15,000, according to this CNN story. Unicef reckons that the international trade in human babies is worth as much as US$25 million a year, with some parents prepared to pay as much as US$20,000 to secure a choice specimen of babyhood.
Puppies can be had for free from your local pound. Even if you want to buy a purebred puppy from a reputable breeder, you’ll probably pay no more than a few hundred bucks.
2. With babies, you don’t have a choice of breeds or bloodlines.
One of the most fun things about choosing a dog is that you get to choose among hundreds of breeds, each with its own physical characteristics and temperament. If you want a baby that’s not the exact same breed as you are, the best you can do is crossbreed and make a mongrel in the process.
Similarly, with babies you’re stuck with the questionable contents of your own gene pool. Any registered dog breeder can provide you with comprehensive, verifiable information about your puppy’s family history. You may be a bitser but your dog doesn’t have to be.
3. Getting a puppy won’t give you stretch marks.
You don’t have to kiss your youthful figure goodbye just because you need to hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet around your home (extra bonus: you get twice as many tiny feet). You also won’t have to endure morning sickness, midnight cravings, post-partum depression or hours of painful labour. You will not visibly lactate every time a dog barks in your neighbourhood, either.
4. Puppies can be housetrained.
You will never have to change your puppy’s nappies. With careful housetraining, an eight-week-old puppy can be taught to go out back in a week. True, they’ll never learn to use the toilet, but imagine how easy parenthood would be if human babies could be taught to crawl through a flap in the door and shit in the yard?
5. You don’t have to put your puppy through university.
You also don’t have to buy a puppy the latest clothes, music, or video games. Apart from a little obedience training, there are few educational costs associated with dog ownership. Your puppy will never ask to borrow the keys to your car, and will never call you in the middle of the night to tell you they’ve wrecked it. A puppy will not insist on playing heavy metal music at an ear-shattering volume in your house, nor spend it’s entire adolescence on the telephone while you are expecting an important call.
After a lifetime of gently introducing puppy to progressive ideas and paying for a university education, a puppy will not repay you by joining the Liberal Party and becoming a real-estate agent.
6. It’s permitted – indeed encouraged – to render your puppy sterile at an early age.
Parents of teenage children will immediately understand the attraction. Just imagine how easily you’d sleep tonight would be if young Jason or Britney had had their gonads removed when they were six months old.
You can also have your puppy microchipped, and force it to wear a collar tag listing its name, address and your phone number, so that it can be immediately returned to you should it stray.
7. Dogs live twelve, fifteen years at most.
Which, when you think about it, is about the point at which most parents begin to really regret having kids. Even if you grow tired of little Rover, there’s no shame in putting him up for adoption after a few years trial run (FOR THE RECORD, I STRONGLY DISAGREE WITH THIS PART). Children, however, tend to harbour grievances against their parents if they do this.
Chances are, you will outlive your dog. You will get to see it grow from a gangly puppy into a responsible, protective adult, you will nurse it through its senescence and it will pass away loving you as much as it did the day you brought it home. You don’t get this kind of closure with kids.
8. You can have sex in front of your dogs without scarring them for life.
You can also get drunk and take drugs while they’re around, forget to feed them every now and again, let them go months at a time without a bath, tie them up in the street while you go shopping, and leave them alone and unsupervised from an early age … all without attracting the attention of social services. Dogs won’t discuss intimate details of your life with other dogs, and even if they do the other dogs won’t be able to tell their humans what a pig you are.
9. It’s OK to call your dog ‘bitch’. Which is better than having your human children do it to you.
Your dog will never call you names, resent that you don’t make as much money as their friends’ parents, or put you in a retirement home. Your dog will accept discipline when you give it, and will learn from its mistakes.
Puppies have long memories when it comes to important things, like: it’s not OK to go through the garbage, no matter how good it smells; but very short memories for unimportant things like: I was just going through the garbage and that bitch/bastard yelled at me. Human children are the exact reverse.
Most little kids, even the good-looking ones whom I like (i.e., Huxley and Trane and Katie and Julia), are whiny, clingy, demanding, selfish, smelly little brats. Dogs can be like that, too, but at least they’re easier to train. And before you start to criticize my pessimism about children, don’t. Unless you meet the following two criteria 1). You have raised at least one child from birth to adolescence as a single parent; 2). At least one of your children was what child psychologists label a "difficult child". Mild-mannered, soft-spoken children and honor students who go straight from high school to college don’t count.
Thurs Feb 21 – While I was getting rear-ended today after coming home from Northern Virginia where I had the oil changed, (acquiring over $1000 of damage to our Toyota RAV-4), Mies was at home, wreaking havoc and raising Cain. He got into the closet where the dog food is and had himself (Oslo did, too) an early dinner. He makes a habit of it everytime he gets a chance to rummage through our pockets, looking for treats. Today this entailed tearing the coats, along with the hooks and a 1"x 2" board to which they were secured, down from the closet wall. Maybe he thought he was filming for one of those cheesy design home improvement shows? Who the fuck knows. Or maybe he was playing out his own version of the embassy attack happening at about the same time in Belgrade??
Anyway, about all that stuff I just wrote about dogs being better than kids? Well, uuuhhhh….
Fri Feb 22 – The Weims managed to stay out of trouble today, but Max the Boxer didn’t. This just in, from the Associated Press:
`Stolen truck’ taken by dog in Calif.
Doggone it, my truck’s gone!
Police said Charles McCowan parked his pickup in front of a mini-mart Wednesday, leaving his 80-pound Boxer named Max in the passenger seat. When he came out, the truck and Max were gone. McCowan called police, assuming the truck had been stolen. When officers arrived, they found the pickup across the street in a fast-food parking lot but had no idea how it got there.
In security video shown Thursday on KCAL-TV, the truck can be seen rolling backward out of the store lot and across the street, threading its way through traffic and out of view. Police said that after McCowan left the truck, Max knocked the vehicle out of gear and sent it rolling backward.
Way to go, Max!
Sat Feb 23 – Speaking of Boxers, Oslo hates them. We think this is because of my friend Janet’s dog, Brutus. When he was a puppy, he decided he was going to be the boss of Oslo. Oslo decided that no, he wasn’t. Since Oslo was about 40lbs heavier at the time than Brutus, Oslo won. But of course, Brutus is a big boy now and could probably kick Oslo’s ass if he wanted to. And he wants to, see?
Sun Feb 24 – Nothing happened today. Except the stupid Oscars.
Mon Feb 25 – Today’s headlines announce the closing of all Starbucks stores for three hours. Why? Because their coffee tastes like shit and Howard thinks that three measly hours of training is going to remedy the situation. Riiiiiight. Maybe he should just resign himself to the fact that Starbucks has become and will forever be the McDonald’s of coffee.
Chez nous, I thought about shutting our doors for three hours, too. Just to try my new 30-point checklist for Mies-proofing the house before I went out for some really good coffee.