A day in the life of a dog Mum

At school, I refer to my dog as my ‘fur baby’, to which my smart ass students ask “Did you give birth to her?” I reply as a smart ass… “Yes”!

This is for all the dog Mums and pawents to share the love and maybe get us a tiny bit of street cred as to why we refer to our dogs as babies! Those of you with human babies will have started off buying nappies or thinking about how to deal with poo disasters before they are toilet trained…. as do we (puppy toilet training pads or ‘floor nappies’). As a baby, they have to learn how to walk… so do puppies. I remember thinking that a dog just walks from day one but at twelve weeks old, after all their shots, they are still finding their feet, how far they can go and working out how to walk on a lead. So we carry them when they are tired and we coax them along just like a baby. We buy them toys and take a million photos as they grow. The similarities continue…

Is it a girl or a boy?

It’s traditionally pink for girls and blue for boys to identify your baby. Super old fashioned and a stereotype that needs to be thrown out, it stops the idiots on the street from asking mundane questions and misidentifying your baby. The confusion about my dogs sex is just as annoying. I ended up covering her in pink- pink collar, pink ID tag and a pink lead. ‘She’s a girl’ I’d cry out in my head when strangers approached us.

“Hello little fella”

“What a good boy”

“He’s a cutie”

I’d just referred to “she” chatting to a dude online. Can’t you read?!

Don’t eat that!

Whilst parents are worried about age appropriate soft toys and eating off the floor, I worry about dead birds, chicken bones, chop bones and a drunks left over Maccas mashed into the pavement.

She is so cute, people used to feed her dog treats through the fence. At the drive-in bottle shop, they offer dog treats through the window. They greet her at the vets with a little treat. Noooooo- she is allergic to EVERYTHING!

Is it a number 1? Number 2? Number 3….. ewwwwww

My friends that have had a baby comment on the poo disasters. Poop everywhere. The number 3 poo explosions are particularly hard to deal with and clean up. One poor little guy had gastro which was a complete nightmare!

“Car seat covered, bedding covered, child covered! Poo in the bed, poo on the floor, poo squirted in the portacot”

My doggo likes to roll in poo! If she runs off into the bush, she’s found wombat or kangaroo poo (just guessing) and down-dog pose to rub her neck and face in it. Sometimes rolls her whole body over it. Often just washed, she must be too clean. One day she rolled in a big dogs big sloppy poo and it was all over her face and neck and collar. She then tried to wipe off some on the grass, rubbing more of it into her face and eyes and choking.

Then there’s her own poo issues- I’ve wiped off messy poo, cut off dry poo, picked up a hell of a lot of poo everyday, broken bags with poo on my hands and running out of bags with improvising what the hell to do with the poo!

We struggle at bath time. Like your child cries or throws a tantrum, my baby hates the idea of a bath. Sometimes I get lucky and she can wash off in the ocean. Oh wait, this beach was covered in oil spills from the boats…. sigh.

Doctor, doctor!

A Mum proclaimed “Freaking continuous cold. Sodding day care.”

My house has been fleamageddon! After dog sitting in January, I have been fighting a flea pandemic that I continually seem to be losing.

She’s allergic as I mentioned….. allergic to meat and protein, grass, dairy, and gluten. (What’s left for her to enjoy? Carrots). She has skin infections, ear infections, bladder infections almost non stop. The Vet bills are non stop. So are the calls to Mum for advise… just like a baby.

Sleepless nights

There’s licking, scratching, crying, toilet needs, teething, wanting to sleep with Mum, nightmares, and sickness which means I haven’t slept through the night for almost seven years.

So… I call her my baby!

I’m not that naive and know that they are different. How many of you are dunking your babies in the ocean to get clean?!

Happy Easter!!

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Mr Tix all boxes except mine

I was raised with optimistic and caring parents and find I now run around with a generous dollop of positivity (life still sucks don’t get me wrong). When I tried to ‘rescue’ my ex boyfriends with my positivity in the past, it failed miserably! I wouldn’t do that again. Unfortunately one of them was an addict and looking back now, it was an incredibly unhealthy and toxic relationship.

Now what I fail at is the casual, loosey goosey approach when I find a potential partner rather than a project. But I’ve tried. Man was I a loose goose with Mr Ticks All Boxes (let’s call him Tix for short).

This time last year, I dated Mr Tix for 6 weeks and then he strung me along for another 4 weeks ‘on hold’ before he finally told me he’d met someone else.

For 10 weeks I tried to be positive. I tried to be easy going because he ticked all of my boxes.

Social and friendly (had a great smile and was quite positive)

 Close to his family and a good group of friends. We actually had some friends in common!

Fit-  playing sport rather than being obsessed with the gym

Job satisfaction

Very attractive with a great head of hair and nice, neat beard

 Easy to get along with- we laughed a lot and talked about all kinds

His story was that he had just got out of a long term relationship of 10 years with his first love. They also owned a house together but had been broken up for approx 4 months.

I was seeing him at least once a week and we grew close quite quickly. I went to his house after 2 weeks but he asked me to park down the road as his ex was quite difficult and he didn’t want to cause waves whilst they still owned the house together. Of course. I was casual, positive, easy-going.

After about 4 weeks, he cancelled on our weekend plans as ‘the shit had hit the fan’. His ex found out he was seeing someone and lost her mind. She supposedly declared her love for him and asked him to take her back. When he said no, she used the house against him. She demanded more money in the buy-out settlement, threatened he would never see their dogs again and took all the remaining furniture. Even their bed! He said he needed time to process this and sort things out. Instead of our plans, he had a few friends (that I didn’t know) over to his place to help him drown his sorrows in beer.

That week he said he couldn’t see me anymore as it was all too much at the moment. I was so understanding (casual, positive, easy going).

Two days later, he said he couldn’t stop thinking about me and we had to give this a chance. We were on again.

We kept seeing each other for another two weeks but there was quite a few nights he had to try and sort things through with his ex. They allegedly had to meet to try to negotiate the sale of the house and split assets. That’s cool.

At the 6 weeks mark, he was very stressed. He was trying to fix up things around the house to add value, clean it all, and then meet a range of real estate agents (that his ex also had to meet and approve) and then arrange for the house to be ‘dressed’ for inspections as she had taken all the furniture. It came to a head. He couldn’t see me anymore until this was sorted. We agreed to keep in touch and when the timing was right, if it was right for both of us, we could resume our romance.

We kept in touch and he text me and called me and said how amazing we were together but wouldn’t meet up.

At 10 weeks, he finally arranged a date with me!!!!!!! But I got strange texts all day. One of the last ones was worrying about wasting my time. He finally admitted, he was meeting up with me to give me the courtesy to tell me he had met someone else. I told him don’t bother and don’t contact me again.

I recently read Drew Barrymore’s book “Wildflower’ and there is chapter called ‘Door One’. She had just started seeing her now husband, Will and was over analysing everything.

Would sharing a life with someone mean I was no longer my own person but a ‘we’?….

How could I stay one of two, rather than becoming half of one…..

Just like anyone who is about to settle down, I started to examine everything.

I had already made my mind up about Mr Tix but he hadn’t and I just wanted to be in the running. Upon reflection, I think he had two girls ‘on the go’ and was weighing us up. The drinks with ‘friends’ to drown his sorrows included the friend he hooked up with. I worked in recruitment for 11 years and you always advise candidates of the recruitment and selection process, let them know of their status and provide them with feedback. Dating is the same process: several candidates, a couple are shortlisted and only one (should be) successful. But you never know the status of your application!! Its a blind process. 

Drew Barrymore’s friend, Liza, gave her this advise:

Everyone wants to overthink and analyse and take all the fun out of it and freak out, but the truth is you pick door number one. You choose the great person in front of you and you don’t play the game of Let’s Make a Deal and see what’s behind door number two because we are so conditioned to seeing what else is out there.

Of course Mr Tix was behind door number one. I was just waiting for him to choose me. Perhaps I was behind door number two and he wanted to give the other girl a chance first. I suspect he kept us both in the dark til he decided. My theory is that girls give door number one a chance and guys want multiple doors to open and like to play Let’s Make a Deal!

What’s your thoughts?

 

Speed dating

Online dating is starting to wear me down so I challenged myself to consider 200 guys in 7 days. My version of speed dating. One last energetic foray to see if I can burst through some of the barriers and get any results.

With a 25 km radius and age range of 35-42 years on Bumble, there seemed to be plenty of guys to look through. These guys had already looked at my profile and swiped right (yes) so if I liked their profile it was a guaranteed mutual match.

However, I was only into about 1 in 4 and swiped right for 54 of them.

Out of the 201 I said ‘no’ to, I had seen 23 of their profiles or chatted to them before! Two of them were in open relationships and stated that they were poly so there was no misunderstandings. As I continued on Sunday afternoon, I noticed that the distance of the matches grew significantly. One guy was 1 hour and 42 mins drive away in a place I’d never heard of! Bumble must expand the location so that you have always got matches. It’s kind but inconvenient.

That should have left me a lot of guys to talk to and plenty of dating options. Bumble requires the female to make the first contact and then the guys have 24 hours to respond or the match expires. Well, that meant that many of the matches disappeared. By Sunday night, I’m left with 13 that I have been talking to, and another 14 pending reply.

I’m talking with a puppy dog that I asked on a play date today, but he was busy.

I’m also talking with a (very well versed) 35 year old guy that I’ve planned to meet next Friday night for a drink in the city. This one excites me!

I turned down the guy who asked me over to his house on Thursday night to ‘play games’. Sometimes they turn me off straight away if I think that’s their M.O and don’t really care who I am. But this time, I tried to give him a chance. I get that the sexes communicate differently, maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. You really need to stay true to your values though. I stand strong that I’m not going to go to a strangers house. If they want to meet me, then date me.

I feel confident that I will have two dates out of these matches. Let’s see what happens next…

	Yes	No
Monday	10	23
Tuesday
Wednesday	7	41
Thursday	8	33
Friday	7	18
Saturday
Sunday	24	86
TOTAL	54	201