Am I getting a puppy or having another baby?
I’ve prepared the other household members for his arrival, I’ve picked a name, I’ve created a cosy place for him to sleep, I’ve created a routine for feeding, play and rest – when he’s bigger I’ll move everything above grabbing height, plug up the plugholes, put up a stairgate to stop him getting upstairs, I’ll reward him for sitting nicely and not nipping the cats. Yes, it’s the imminent arrival of a puppy, not a baby. But I swear that it’s taking more preparation than I employed for my own human nippers.
After months of deliberation about whether or not to get a puppy, we finally decided, as a family, to take the plunge. I thought it would take weeks, even months to find the puppy we wanted. A new litter, with two boys available, literally popped up the next day. That was just the start of it. If you think that getting a puppy is all about what my teenage son would call the “shiz and giggles”, you’d be wrong. It’s like preparing for a baby, but more expensive and complicated. This little puppy needs more attention, routine and maintenance than a human infant.
When I accidentally but happily got pregnant with my first son, now 14, I was young (relatively anyway – in my corner of South West London having a baby at 25 was seen as an action of Vicky Pollard-esque stupidity and recklessness, not to mention career suicide), a bit silly, newly jobless after chucking in my well-paid but loathsome job to train to be a journalist instead, and newly shacked-up with my boyfriend. We’d only been living together for two months, and here was a little thing growing inside me. We were terrified. We were excited. We were totally clueless.
I shunned the routine-based regimented advice of Gina Ford, sneering in my cocky young bird’s way at her ideas of “regular bedtimes” “feeding schedules” and “having your life, body and sanity back”. What an idiot.
I loved being pregnant; after the first three months of gut-wrenchingly bad all-day sickness and craving for liquorice allsorts had subsided, I was literally the embodiment of glowing expectant motherhood. But still totally clueless.
We somehow managed to cobble together the requisite clothing, nappies, wipes, sleeping quarters etc that he needed, but the overall feeling was “it’ll be fine, we’ll figure it out.” I read all the books, but ignored most of the advice, feeling that I would be an instinctive parent. And as a baby, he crawled all over my instinctive parenting by staying up all night and sending us mad with fatigue.
I didn’t fare much better with my second one. While other mums in my peer group (it was five and a half years later, so people my own age were squeezing sprogs out too by now) were shopping in John Lewis for nappy stackers and colour coding their children’s Mini Boden wardrobes, I was barely able to remember to pack wipes AND nappies AND milk in his changing bag. It was all far too much for my tiny disorganised mind.
But I won’t make the same mistakes this time. I am now grown up. I am organised. I will be the puppy-owning equivalent of nappy-stacking Mini Boden mum. Now I understand why as a 25-year-old new mum I was so intimidated by the older mothers who seemed to have it all worked out. I’ll never be the queen of forward-planning but a more mature brain loves a bit of order. When you start having senior moments at 40 you need some sort of a plan to remind you of what the hell you’re supposed to be doing.
So the puppy will benefit from this new approach. My kids somehow get to school every day with a clean uniform and a bag with their books and lunch in and I must have a hand in that somewhere along the line. This puppy needs to know who’s boss so he’ll grow up secure and confident in his place in this household. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to draw up his socialisation plan and alphabetise his toys.
