Happy Dog Mom Day

I read somewhere that dogs have the same intelligence and verbal understanding of a toddler.  Which means I have four toddlers in my house.  Which makes sense.  This place has more gates than the Pentagon, and some of them pre-dated Baby H and will stay in place after he's old enough not to need them.  I have an entire cabinet of dog supplies downstairs and the bathroom upstairs is packed with baby supplies and sundries, and there's so many toys littered on the floor right now that you can't walk through a room without the very real likelihood of stepping on one, the odds being even on whether it's a dog or human toy.  Toddlers require constant attention - at this stage, while they're beginning to discover their world, they still require all their meals prepared and cleaned up after, can't bathe or dress themselves or be left entirely unsupervised at any time.  For me, of course, that's not my main role - it's my daughter's.  Which is good, because there's rarely a time there's not something pending I need to do for my furry family: wash bowls, make sure they get some exercise, heartworm pills, scoop the poop (there's so much excrement in our trash between the diapers, dog poo and kitty litter that I have never had a problem with raccoons in my trash - a rare thing around here), and so on.  Today's planned itinerary was to give the dogs a good grooming, which was sidelined by a migraine (Heaven forbid the Dog Dad step in and do it for me - granted, it's far easier with four hands than two).  But in that one aspect if I'm truly comparing dogs to toddlers, they're easier - they've been fine without me and just enough other human assistance to make sure they were fed and pottied, and they're just plain happy they escaped that fate.  And maybe that's how I raised two kids with four dogs - because, I do sometimes look back and wonder - the dogs just waited their turn far better than a child does.

I've written many times about how dogs do so much for us.  Today is a day where we get to actually unabashedly admit we do a lot for them too.  So, Dog Moms (and Dads), pat yourselves on the back for all the hours playing fetch, all the times you've wrestled an unwilling dog into the bathtub, cleaned ears and teeth, clipped nails (always a harrowing experience for me since two of my three have dark nails and I can't see the quick).  And, last, but not least, made the hardest decision of all - when to let a dog make his or her final journey to the Rainbow Bridge.

Of course, we won't get a card (although they do make them "from the pets") or a present in paper and a bow.  The dogs won't make us a lovely dinner or bake us a cake.  We'll have to settle for dog kisses and, if we're lucky, a cuddle or two.  But, I'm glad to be a Dog Mom.  I'm not sure my family ever would have been whole without them, and I've been so fortunate to have some great companions over the years.  So a dog kiss or two is more than I need today.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you from our family, two and four-legged both.

The faces have changed over the years, but the love never has