Puppies and teenagers

1507 Amy's Dog Blog 11 years ago Amy Schofield 1

As I strode through the field, the sun setting fetchingly on the horizon, a gentle breeze in my hair and a crazy golden puppy gambolling around my welly-shod feet, occasionally taking a bite out of my heel, I thought, this is the life.

I turned around to share the moment with my first born son, for it was he who had told me about how wonderful the arrival of a puppy in our lives would be, he who had painted such a convincing picture of this life of companionship and country walks.

But there was no-one there but me, the pup, his face full of grass and something nasty, and a field full of ticks and daddy-long-legs. I was on my own, again. The teenage son who had campaigned so vehemently for months for a puppy was at home, again, cocooned in his room, again, blithely ignorant of the fact that he hasn’t so much as looked at a lead or a dog bowl in weeks, let alone picked them up and used them. I couldn’t help thinking “I’ve been had”.

For a boy whose laziness knows no bounds, my son was unusually active in his campaign to secure a puppy. His usual cry of “I’m hungry” had been replaced with “When are we getting a dog? Reasons why we should…” countless times a day. He even got up early about twice, IN THE HOLIDAYS, to demonstrate how he would handle the daily challenge of walking the small canine in the wee small hours.

So my partner and I cracked and relented and said yes. And my teenage son, secure in the knowledge that his work here had been done, withdrew from the whole dog-owning thing, put his headphones back on and has hardly been seen for months as the rest of us have been caught up in a relentless whirl of feeding, walking (being dragged along the streets and fields of the village anyway), going to puppy training classes, sustaining various puppy-induced injuries, going to huge expense, mending ripped clothes, washing muddy clothes, loving and stroking the great soppy dog and trying to stop the cat ripping his eyes out.

Given how much they actually have in common – they’re both eating me out of house and home, growing like enormous weeds, putting their big feet in everything and delighting and frustrating me in equal measure – in theory they should be like two peas in a massive pod.

I know my son loves that dog – he has been known to slope around the park with him (I should have taken a picture because it happens so rarely) and even feed him but never without prompting. And there’s no doubt the dog loves him. But I need some help with the practicalities of this dog-owning deal.

So do I take to the chaise longue like an exhausted Barbara Cartland and force him to take over? I suspect my capacity for martyrdom matches his capacity for inactivity so instead of sighing loudly from the kitchen as I dish up another doggy dinner and take the puppy on another walk, I should hand the proverbial reins over sometimes and hope that this will awaken his responsible side. He’s almost 15, does he even have one? Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the dog doesn’t starve…