Thursday 15 January 2009

A kid is for life...


My sister said something that really wound me up the other day.
“Ooh it’s just like having kids when you’ve got dogs isn’t it?”
I know she was only trying to get across the point that her dogs are hard work.
But it’s NOT the same as having kids. Not at all.
For instance, when she was making this observation, she was sitting in my house while her dogs were at home on their own.
Much as I’d like to go out and leave my kids at home alone while I swanned off to have tea and cake in someone else’s gaff, I can’t ever do that.
Not without getting a criminal record anyway.
She’s also got a job four days a week.
And funnily enough, I’ve never seen her forking out squillions of quid a week to put her dogs in a nursery while she’s there.
She can nip to the pub, or the cinema or clubbing whenever she feels like it without having to take her pooches with her.
I haven’t been to the pub, cinema or clubbing for years.
Dogs don’t keep you awake much at night crying because their back molars are coming through either.
DD2 was wailing none stop from 10.30pm to 4am the other night.
If she was a puppy, I could have shoved her in the outhouse and left her to it.
But being a human, I had try and offer some comfort.
And I had to put up with her constant moans about wanting daddy instead of boring old me too. (Daddy was indisposed with a case of man flu that night - grrr).
Maybe there are a few similarities between kids and dogs in terms of dealing with poo.
And you can use similar disciplinary measures when they’re naughty etc.
But let’s just be clear.
Dogs are generally speaking a nice, if a little time-consuming, distraction for folk who want an extra interest at home.
Kids are a life sentence.