Top Dog

At the moment we are the classic nuclear family, if by that you read nuclear in the explosive and potentially disastrous sense of the word, otherwise we are the nuclear family; 2 adults, 2 children, 1 dog, plus some. (4 kids, 2 dogs.)

Children are always going to want a pet, it must be a natural instinct to want or need something to lord it over, be in charge of and control. The kids love it. As much as all the other plus points of having a pet to care for are nice, this really is the bottom line, the not wanting to be last in the pecking order.

I am all for pets, but don’t actually want the long term responsibility that inevitably falls to the parents when the novelty wears off. This is why in our house we borrow dogs, so it is always a novelty, and give them back before they become a chore. My theory is that in the children’s selective memory they will believe they grew up having a dog, but we needn’t actually go to the bother of getting them one.

Since this week we have not one, but two dogs, it works even better. There are two leads, so that minimises the arguments over whom gets hold them...or so I thought. Before the dogs even arrived, Emilia and Patrick had come to an amicable arrangement that she would take charge of the girl dog, Millie and he would have the boy dog, Toby.

One morning I just took the girls out to walk them. Two dogs, two girls, one each and no argument...what I didn’t bank on was them both preferring the same one, the female black Labrador who didn’t pull on the lead quite as strongly. We managed to keep the peace though with turn taking, negotiation and distraction.

You can see from Rachel’s face and demeanor that she absolutely loves the fact that she is not bottom of the pile anymore. She is constantly saying “No!” to the dogs, and telling them what to do and where to go. She enjoys the power of giving them their food, taking their leads on and off and generally bossing them about.

The children rose early the first morning we had the dogs and were nagging me to get out of bed so we could get outside and walk them. Talk about role reversal, on a school morning without dogs, it is me nagging them to get up. This enthusiasm was fairly short lived though, later in the week, they were less fussed and it ended up being just me walking them by myself. (Which is quite blissful, it has to be said.)

It is easy to romanticise the idea of a dog. It is lovely to see the child dog relationship develop. When you witness the scene of Ben reading in his hammock in the spring sunshine, with the faithful dog lying beneath, or of Patrick running along with the dog at his side, you can see the temptation. It is so heart warming to see Rachel and cousin Charlie cuddled up with the dogs in the dog bed, or Emilia trying to teach them tricks. On these occasions I really have to persuade myself getting a dog is a bad idea.

Also, what has been particularly gratifying is that the dogs recognise me as chief of this family, even over Mark. We were out walking and I detoured to deposit the bag in the dog waste bin, Mark called the dogs to continue walking the opposite direction with him, but after initial obedience they came running back to find me, causing him to remark,

“You are obviously the Alpha dog round here.”

Mark is Beta dog, as he had the same problem persuading the dogs to leave him to go off with Ben when I wasn’t there.

As much as I know deep down that if it was Mark who fed the dogs, it would be him whose authority would be recognised, it  does feel good that someone sees me as top dog round here.   

Perhaps it is me then, not Rachel, who is so desperate to be in charge.