A dog is for life…
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MummyBloggers
After my third child reached 12 years of age, I thought my baby days were over, but I had reckoned without the persuasive powers of my second child.
One dog is enough, I insisted. I’m working, you’re in school, I reasoned. You’re going to college in two years. You’ll have to walk him and feed him and look after him. All very reasonable arguments. So why do I now have an eight-week-old Vizsla puppy chewing on my slipper?
Because sometimes even the most reasonable arguments have to give way to your gut.
Sometimes you can weigh up every logical reason why you should take a specific course of action, yet you still do the opposite. Why? Because your gut instinct takes over. Recent research indicates a strong link between our gut and your brain, suggesting that there may be an actual scientific basis to going with your gut.
Whatever the reason, letting my son get a puppy just seemed like the right thing to do. We always had dogs growing up, but none of them was my dog. My hope is that, by giving my son a dog of his own to love and care for and grow up with, he will learn a new sense of responsibility that is not all about school.
Life is tough when you are 16. Janis Ian could have gone back a year when she sang about the travails of “those whose names were never called when choosing sides for basketball.”
It’s hard to find certainty when you are under pressure to do well at school and prepare for the future, yet nobody trusts you enough to give you any responsibility apart from knuckling down and studying for a career that has about as much reality for you as Santa Claus.
So what has the new puppy got to do with any of this?
Well, he’s already kept the house up for the past two nights crying. Then there’s the peeing, pooing, and teething.
If you want responsibility, it’s as close as you can get to parenthood without having a baby.
He is also absolutely adorable.
Aoife O'Carroll is a separated mum living in Co Kerry with her two boys aged 17 and 14, and a girl aged 10.
