Mommy Feeling Energy

A friend of mine was stuck at a dinner where a woman espoused that she planned on purchasing a poodle so she could experience that “Mommy Feeling Energy.”

Now I know that pets are members of the family. They provide comfort, companionship and require good care. I don’t doubt the depth of feeling of owners of dogs, cats, ferrets, horses and all things furry; it’s just that the comparisons themselves are wrong; apples and oranges, kids and dogs, fish and bicycles. The emotional connection between the cared for and the caring is not something I wish to mock, it’s the intellectual argument of equal footing. Any pet owner can leave a dish of water and a dish of food and walk out the door to work, even if the dog is six months old. There is still some questioning of parental judgment if a sixteen year old with a fully stocked refrigerator is left unsupervised for more than two hours.

You can teach a dog to sit. “Stay. Come. Heel. Quiet. Fetch.” All can be taught within the first year. Kids, you have to latch into a car seat and hope they sit, stay, and keep the noise below public ordinance levels. After ten years, they still need daily reminders to put shoes in the closet, not leave milk glasses on top of the piano, and empty garbage cans before they cascade onto the floor. Dogs don’t have homework or relive fights they had with their litter mates that happened three days ago with full emotional vigor. As expensive a breed of dog, cat or whatever as you can find, as gourmet as pet food comes, and as many medical needs as they might have, pets still won’t require a new clothes each year for school, a college education, extra trips for soccer games or a cell phone. At some point, a dog is still a dog, even if it’s a Chihuahua.

Kids demand more from day one. They take over your body, your brain, your house, your life, your whole heart. The stretchmarks they leave on one’s soul are wider and more permanent than any one might find on the abdomen or one’s pocketbook. They connect us to our parents, and to the future and demand via their very own neediness that we become more the people we were always supposed to be.

Finally, no one has ever uttered the words, “I’m going to have a kid so I can experience what it’s like to own a pet. It will give me that Pet Owning Emotional connection.”

Feeling good today, only 30 or less days until Paul arrives so expect the postings to drop off sometime near the end of September. So when that happens, try Humor-Blogs.com!