Sharon Wright has lots and LOTS of pictures of her cute pooch to show you. No, don’t run away…
I’m part of a trend. Not the one for super-stretchy big knickers, the one for having an only child and getting your other one from the Kennel Club. Now I have two boys – one is taller than me, the other is covered in mud and hurls tennis balls at my head when I’m trying to read. Which I find adorable, of course, because I find everything Scruffy does adorable.
It’s not just me in this dog-meet-dog world. Midlife Dogzillas are everywhere. We aren’t boring you with baby photos – we’re trapping you in front of endless phone pics of our surrogate child, choosing to ignore the glazed look in your eyes. You might not welcome a full rundown of the fur baby’s funny little ways, either, but we don’t let that stop us.
A proper pet
It started, as so many of these things do, with a frank exchange of views with my husband when our son was little. ‘I want a dog,’ I said evenly.
‘But they’re so tying!’ he wailed.
‘Our only child needs a proper pet,’
I said, wheeling out the guilt gun. ‘A dog, not the boring guinea pig.’
And so we took our seven-year-old to see a litter of bichon frise puppies. Two big, hearty-looking girls galumphed around in tandem while a much smaller boy pup wobbled over to our little lad’s foot and simply flopped on it.
‘This one,’ he smiled, scooping up the feeble-looking fluff ball.
Now I don’t want to sound callous here, but this chi-chi hound was costing a lot of money so I didn’t want the weakling. The breeder offered to do a switcheroo when it was time to take one home, but I didn’t have the heart to go through with it. One look into those puppy eyes and I was in love.
And it wasn’t long before my previously pooch-averse bloke was kissing the dog before me when he arrived home. Talking to the puppy in baby talk I didn’t recall him using on any actual babies.
Of course I dived into The Advice. There’s tons of expert instruction on what you simply must and must not do with a baby dog, much as there is when you have a baby human. And just like baby advice, it’s pretty much useless in real life.
Within a week, baby-dog was sleeping on the bed, frolicking on the furniture and I was totally fine with my dogmother failings. So what if my furry boy liked to poo under the piano? And I could quite s
