Doggie doggone

If you know anything about me and Scott, you know that we have had, um, bad luck with dogs in the past. We have attempted to adopt a few dogs over the last 12 years and it has never worked out. Admittedly, we have made mistakes that we regret as dog owners, but we have also had things happen that were just beyond our control. We had one dog that we loved and was so wonderful with the kids, but she kept running away. Our vet determined that she had been bred to be a sled dog as she was part greyhound and part husky, so she had running in her blood. It became clear over the few months that we had her that she was not happy about being in our home. We spent a lot of time chasing after her after she would slyly get out of our yard or house, once time nearly causing a major accident on a busy road near our home. In total she ran away about about 18 times in the 5 or so months that she was with us. No matter what we did to keep her safe and on our property she always found a way to get out. She was a smart dog who outsmarted us humans many a time.

Ultimately she ran away for the final time after she somehow got our back gate open and we never saw her again. (Her collar was off that day because we had just given her a bath, so there were no tags to allow people to return her to us.) Many months later we saw her picture up on the local animal shelter website, which stated that she liked to "run and run, and run and run and run". It seemed that we were not the only family who had a difficult time keeping her home, and that she had been in shelter more than once since she last ran away from us. We still miss her and we hope that she is happy wherever she is now.

Regardless, we have realized after our, ahem, multiple experiences with trying to give a dog a forever home that we are simply not equipped at this point in our lives to be dog owners. We love the idea of having a dog in our home, especially Scott who grew up with dogs his entire life until moving out of his parent's house. However, we sadly and regrettably cannot seem to make dog ownership work for us right now.

We had made peace with the fact that it would need to be years before we would attempt to adopt another dog, if ever really. That was until about 6 weeks ago when Braden started talking about wanting a dog. In the last weeks he has gone from just occasionally mentioning it to talking about how badly he wants a dog multiple times every single day. He has even taken to wearing his dog costume for hours each day. He has suddenly become completely obsessed with dogs.

This morning, totally out of the blue, he looked at me and with complete seriousness, as well as a tinge of sadness to his voice, he said, "Mama, I'm big enough now to have a dog. And our house is big enough too. Can we please get a dog now?"

I tried my best to explain to him that now is not a good time for us to get another dog. Yet, it was clear that he did not care what my reasons are, all he wants is to find a way to bring a dog into our home. Seeing him want for a dog so badly brings about immense guilt and sadness in me that we were not able to make dog ownership work for us in the past. I wish so much that we could run out and find him the perfect dog today, but I know that it is not something that we can or should do at this time. I do not know how to explain this to Braden and I especially do not know how to help him not be sad about not having a dog anymore. Seeing Braden so sad about not having a dog is particularly difficult for me and Scott, because we know that most of the reasons behind us not being able to get Braden the dog he so desperately wants is due to our own failings.

The combination of being human and parents is an incredibly difficult thing.