Puppy Love

I love my dog more than my (so-not-happening) future child.

No, this is true. Ever since I took home Micah, my beautiful long-haired mini-dachshund, I developed this strange habit of addressing myself as “mummy” every time I talked to him. Well, yes it does sounds a bit crazy talking to an animal who does not understand anything except for “No!!” and “good boiiiiii” in high-pitched voices, but anyone who owns pets subsequently hold something that resembles a conversation with their beloved dogs / cats / fill in the blanks here.

Anyways, I realized that my beau has, somehow, adopted this strange habit as well. Now it seems kind of strange talking to Micah without so much as yelling “NO!!! Mummy is VERY angry! Naughty boy!” or my beau crooning “Ooohh daddy loves you so vewy much, you’re such a good boy aintcha-aintcha-aintcha???” whilst scratching his ears vigorously.

The weird thing was, I had never, not even once, done a baby talk to an actual baby. Not even to my cousins, who were variously in between two to three years old. I talk to them like I do to any other people – except in much simpler language. And this does not require any simplifying in my parts whatsoever because they happen to be very smart children – unfortunately too smart for their age, actually.

There was even a time in my life where I considered I would never be good with kids and thus it was simply not my destiny to have children because I seriously wouldn’t know what to do with and around them. No, honestly, I just don’t. I tried playing with them, but I couldn’t help but thinking how silly it felt, and I tried to make doing something look interesting so they were persuaded to follow but I sucked so much at it that I just came to the conclusion that children were so not my thing.

So it came to my surprise that I could do the whole baby-talk, patience-on-to-of-everything bit with my little canine fur ball. I even mustered enough enjoyment out of playing catch and throw with him, even though he insisted that once he caught the ball he must pertained it forever within his sharp fangs as if his life was hanging upon the destiny of the ball itself. On top of that, I could easily handle the pooping-and-peeing-everywhere business as if it was just another day-to-day dirty activity that I simply must do – similar to picking my nose, or something. Gross, but had to be done at all cost.

But what I realized was there was a huge difference between kids and dogs – er..durrr!! – we all know that kids can be very cruel sometimes, yes, all of youse who had been bullied would surely understand this. I mean, kids as young as five years old could be very, very menacing and very, very vicious. Sometimes they scared me more than a rabid dog waiting to bite my ass in a one-way street. I had once volunteered at a primary school as a teacher’s assistant and there was this girl in third grade who appeared to be very popular (ahh.. the jocks and the blond bimbo eras were happening so quickly these days) and could swore words like ‘motherf***r’ and ‘you piece of shit’ to her not-so-popular classmates in perfect diction, to my absolute and appalled horror.

Whereas dogs – well. You can scold them, smack their bums, throw the Medusa-look-times-ten to them or tie them in a pole and leave them for hours for chewing your lovely espadrilles (I don’t do the latter, seriously I don’t – but alas, the espadrilles were now history), and they still wag their tails when you get home, climb on top of your lap and lick your face mercilessly, because get this – dogs don’t hold grudges or vengeful feelings. They don’t. It’s not in their nature. You tell them off today and the just forget about it the next day. It’s nice but also annoying – because then they forget the reason why they were being told off in the first place.

It sure gives a whole different meaning to the word ‘advantage’ because no matter how naughty my puppy is, I can never stay angry for too long because he always gives off this sad, please-forgive-me look, whether he means it or not, and it’s just so adorably cute and damn irresistible that I can’t help but forgetting about his naughtiness and hug him and kiss him and cuddle him and do all sorts of lovely things to convey my love for him. Which is something I can never, ever do, to kids.

Human beings should learn a thing or two about love from dogs – they are solely the only single species who manage to love unconditionally (except or mums, but I’m talking romantically though), and there is nothing like coming home to a creature who loves you as much as them.

Yayy Micah yayy!