i don't not like dogs. i just don't like them either. did you get that?
growing up we couldn't have any pets, or even anything resembling a pet, because of one of my sister's severe allergies. as a result, i've never developed any...feelings for animals. i'm sorta just blank in that area. except when a dog licks my hand or leg. or puts his hairy body on my pants. and once on my purse. then i sorta have a "feeling": "great, now i'm dirty".
i know this is a hard pill for animal lovers to swallow. but they're a friendly group as a whole, and i think they can sense that i understand a human's love for animals is real. plus the part about how i wish animals no ill-will.
all this being true, combined with my general avoidance of dogs licking or touching me, i'm a little surprised and a LOT confused as to why both of my children have animal-love-mania. like, up-to-the-moon-and-back-love. like, we discuss dogs 2-4 times a day. no exaggeration.
i told levi when he was bigger like stewart and andrew (his 2 versions of the biggest boys ever) AND he saved up his own money, he could get a dog. that week he told his preschool class he was getting a dog. CLEARLY the boy has no concept of decades. apparently his dog is big, black and named boone. a couple weeks ago we spent some time at my friend's house who has three dogs. on the way home we had this conversation:
"mom, courtney's house has stairs."
"yep"
"but our house doesn't have stairs"
"nope"
"cause you don't like houses with stairs"
"sure don't"
"so...we will never never NEVER have a house with stairs again?"
"i sure hope not!"
...
...
...
...
"but you like dogs right?"
HA! my 3 year old son tried to back-door-logic me!! he should probably reconsider his professional goals of being an astronaut/chef and redirect to the FBI/CIA route. my little matlock.
and when i thought NO ONE could love dogs more than levi, someone did. pickles. at least levi manages to have a balance of several interests, dogs just being one of them. pickles? that's pretty much ALL she's interested in. dogs in the morning. dogs after nap. dogs all night.
my little 1.5 year old daughter can't talk, but she can imitate a dog on command. she's all but abandoned every babydoll in the house, choosing to carry around a dog in each arm, kissing their heads intermittently. she steals shirts out of levi's dirty clothes hamper and wraps her dogs in them. she puts them "night-night", and screams at the top of her mommy-dog lungs if anyone touches one of them.
recently heidi "hand-me-downed" her one of gracie's shopping carts. which immediately became a doggy-stroller. she gathers all the dogs in the house, and anything else she thinks could possibly be a dog, and pushes them endlessly. the sound of shopping cart wheels and bare baby feet are constant background noise in our house. at this moment she has 4 doggies in her cart, plus the following items she deemed "possibly a dog":
i guess i understand most of these...in one way or another resempling a dog. but the pig?? seriously piper. i know she's only 1, but has she ever seen a pink dog? to make it even more bizarre, that pig is battery operated and walks and oinks. so as she pushes her "babies" around the house, there is a few "oinks" mixed in with the barks coming from the cart.
a couple of weeks ago we were on a walk around our neighborhood. levi on his bike, me pulling pickles in a wagon. one of our neighbors had 3 HUGE chocolate labs playing on the porch. they both went nuts. i asked her if her dogs liked kids and she said, "yeah, too much! they're babies, so they're a little agressive." i told her to let em rip. those dogs jumped ALL OVER my kids. licking them, knocking them down, laying on them. they loved it. my neighbor told me i was going to have to get them a dog. i said, "oh! we're planning to!" ....in about 15 years....
