Every little boy dreams of getting his first dog. A popular kids song dating back to 1820 says,
What are little boys made of?
What are little boys made of?
Frogs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails,
That's what little boys are made of.
What are little girls made of?
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice and everything nice,
That's what little girls are made of.
I don’t know about the frogs and snails part, but I think it’s built into every boy to want a dog...our composition is apparently 1/3 dog parts as it were. As a kid the closest I ever got was a cat that we owned when I was 4 or 5. Our cat hated me so much, it would hiss when I would walk into the room. Now, Angel had good reason for hissing. As a little boy I would chase her around and pull on her tail. No wonder. Well anyhow, I wanted to post about charlotte through our dogs’ eyes.
Right around this same age, I began to take on an alter ego/imaginary friend. My name was Ruff, but only when I was behaving and doing the right thing. If I ever misbehaved or got into trouble I would simply state that “Strawberry Ruff did it.” It was a great way to shift the blame onto “someone else”. Isn’t it interesting how young we learn to do that. I say all of that to say that I think I have a pretty good handle on how dogs look at the world for three reasons...
1-I’m 1/3 dog parts
2-My alter ego as a kid was a dog
3-I own two dogs today and before Charlotte they were my babies.
As we were setting up Charlotte’s room, the dogs were very interested. We always joked that Abby thought that we were making the nursery for her. She is in fact 7 years old now, so moving upstairs is kind of like getting the apartment over the garage for a teenager. Jack would often come upstairs to the nursery and just sleep on the area rug in the middle of the room. He learned pretty quickly that the width of the slats on the crib just happen to be the exact same width as his nose and long before Charlotte joined us, he would poke his nose in and look in the crib, almost as if he knew not too long from then something would be in there.
We recently also repainted our guest room upstairs just down a short hall and it is a nice green color, so combined with the soothing gray we put on Charlotte’s walls, I think the upstairs is my new favorite part of the house. I anticipated the day that the dogs and Charlotte would all be upstairs sleeping in the nursery, while I sit in the rocker and enjoy life.
It’s been fun to see how the dogs react to Charlotte. When she’s swaddled or bundled up, she’s really just a head. The real fun is when she’s unwrapped and moving her limbs around. The dogs become much more interested with her limbs and movements when she’s out and free. The other day we came home from a doctors appointment and came in and put Charlotte’s car seat on the kitchen table while we got settled in. I let the dogs out like I always do and it was so cute to see Abby walk over to Charlotte’s swing to see if she was in there. For those of you who know Abby, she’s a great dog, but as far as people go, she’s really only interested in a handful of people. She’ll acknowledge you, but she’s only bff’s with a select few. After not locating Charlotte in her swing, she began to stick her nose in the air and locate her by other means. Abby has a big nose, but it’s a case where size doesn’t matter. She can’t find anything very well with her nose, so eventually I motioned her over to show her where Charlotte lay.
Jack has always been a sweet spirited dog. He’s going to be an even better dog when Charlotte gets a little bigger. I think they’ll be best friends after long. Jack has been very tuned into Charlotte’s noises and wakings. He likes to sit right outside her pack n play or crib when’s she stirring to hear her little musings. We haven’t tried it just yet, but I bet they will learn to snuggle together very soon.
Well I’m sure there will be more great stories about dogs and Charlotte, but for now I’m living the best of both worlds. Melissa let me pick out Abby as our first dog right after we got married and a few years back Melissa saw Jack’s picture on the local county cable channel on a Saturday morning and woke me up and said, “we have to go get him.” Now Charlotte...how did we get her you ask...well I think you know that part, but I also think I have to say that she is an amazingly perfect little girl, so in this case, Ruff is responsible for this one!!!
-jay
