Practice Baby Part One: Adopting a Dog

If you'll remember back to an earlier blog post about my new years resolutions, one of them was to get a dog. Well, friends (with and without babies), we are doing it! After exhaustive searches on the internet, at the Burbank Animal Shelter and at many rescue organizations, E and I have found our little guy. We pick him up today. He is about 3 years old, he has white curly hair, and...that is about all we know about him. We are, however, going to invite him to live in our house with us, and sleep in our bed. Now normally, I would think this type of behavior is Crazy (with a capitol C.)

Not to be one of those people that compares their pets to other people's children, but let's be real here friends, a big part of adopting this dog is to experience, what I like to call, the Practice Baby scenario. As I've mentioned before, E and I have done a fair amount of "practice parenting" before, so this is just taking it to the next level. I'm pretty excited about this. However...the other night I found myself lying in bed until the wee hours of the morning having a minor to major anxiety attack. Was the attacked being caused by the anxiety I feel about having a dog of our very own, or about all the other stressful things in my life? We'll never know...except that I do know. I know that it was primarily about the dog.

Dogs are a lot of work. This I know because, just as I have been a babysitter, I have been a doggy sitter many times. I also had dogs as a kid and have lived with dogs as an adult. But this is the first time that Eric and I will be on a joint venture this serious. We've discussed it, we made lists, we went and met all the perspective dogs together, choosing this particular dog because his doggy personality was in line with our desires. We have planned this as well as someone can plan adopting a dog. And I'm still anxious about it. How will I ever deal with kids?!

I'm pretty sure the answer to that question is that you just deal with it. You deal with the lack of sleep, you deal with the changes to your social life, finances and even to your body. You adjust because the over powering love you feel towards that child makes it all a non issue. If the movie "Friends With Kids" taught me anything other than  (SPOILER ALERT) if you have a baby with your best friend it WILL all work out, it taught me that the overpowering love you feel towards your baby makes ALL CHANGES totally worth it. I'm hoping that the sweet, strange, stray, animal I have just invited in to my bed will make me feel the same way. At least I got a brief written synopsis of this doggy's history on adoptapet.com, and spent 45 minutes with him before we extended him the invite to become our P.B. That's more than most couples get with their babies, right?