D.O.G. Guilt

Naturally, after we gave away D.O.G., I started seeing pictures of look-alike versions of him all over the place.

Like on the cover of Our Iowa magazine which our friend from church passed along to us recently.



And friend Cathy's blog. Her dog has slightly different coloring, but otherwise looks like he could be related.

Then there are the numerous photos we took of D.O.G's puppyhood, which I keep coming across on my hard drive. This from the first few moments we had D.O.G., and were introducing him to Raisin.





Those cute photos from back in the days when he was little and adorable and could do no wrong. (Why, why do I do this to myself?!)



Back when Raisin, puppyless dog that she was, took him in, put up with his whimpering those first couple of nights, and became a surrogate mother of sorts to him.



Back before he turned into the ungrateful cur that bit the hand that fed him.

When I start feeling guilty about this, wondering if we sent a wrong message to our kids about lifetime commitment to our pets, all I have to do is go outside and see Raisin living life to the fullest again without a care in the world, sleeping peacefully in the spring sunshine, the nipped patches of fur having finally grown back in, and think, "Nahhh....we did the right thing."

Besides, it's not like we dumped D.O.G. off in the desert or took him to the pound...we found him a very good home.

He is living large there. Moreso than he ever would have here.

In fact, he's downright spoiled.

Seriously, he's maybe two steps removed from Beverly Hills Chihuahua kind of spoiled.

He now gets premium dog food, all kinds of treats and dinner scraps, and gets to sleep indoors and climb around and sleep on the sofas and beds to his hearts content.

We're told he particularly enjoys rolling around on the sofas, as if to say, "Ahhh, see? This...this is the life I was born to lead."

What dog wouldn't relish that kind of royal treatment?

Clearly, he was meant to be an indoor dog. Something we simply couldn't give him here.

For a while there, we were careful not to bring up the topic of D.O.G. (Well, aside from the couple of times I accidentally slipped up and told Jericho, "Make sure you feed your dog(s).")

Then, for a couple of weeks there nothing was said about him.

At which point I happily deluded myself into thinking the kids had already forgotten about him.

That being out of sight meant that he was out of mind.

This might have gone on indefinitely, except that Judah took to calling his little stuffed toy puppy…you guessed it…"D.O.G.".

And wants to snuggle up with said toy puppy every night at bed time.

Now that in itself would have been doable. I could self-talk my way into believing that it was logical that little Judah named his toy puppy the only puppy name he knew, and would forget the real thing before too long.

That our explanations to the kids as to why he couldn't stay at our house and was happy where he was now had been sufficient to comfort their hearts in the matter.

And all this might have worked well for us...

...If only Jericho hadn't just asked to go visit D.O.G. over at his cousin's house this past week.

Oh, the guilt!

In fact, they almost talked us into a new Beagle puppy, too. Playing on mom and dad's sympathies, no doubt.

But we stuck to our guns.

For now.

Oh, but heaven help me those are sweet, adorable dogs.

I can sense that our resolve is slipping.

And whatever kind of dog we get this time around we're stuck with for good, because mama can't handle going through this kind of dog guilt again!