“Get a dog,” they said. “It’ll be fun,” they said.

Actually no one ever said that to me.

We got a dog because my children were growing up and becoming more independent and for about 5 minutes one day nobody needed anything from me and it created a great void in my heart that I decided I had to fill with a dog. That, and I thought a dog would be great for the kids. You know, she would be their best good friend and they would learn responsibility, compassion, and empathy through the care and keeping of a pet. Looking back, I think that’s a pretty tall order for an animal. Also I sort of left myself out of the equation.

Molly came to live with us back in March of this year. We adopted her from a local pet rescue. She had been found wandering the streets, living off scraps and garbage. The lady from the pet rescue said we could keep her for two weeks on a “trial basis”, but we knew as soon as she was in our house she was ours. The kids wouldn’t let us give her back. So we welcomed Molly as a new family member, and thus began my journey to becoming a ‘dog person’.

My first lesson was about dog food. I had researched and decided that I was going to feed my dog grain free dog food because it was supposed to be the best for them. In nature dogs don’t eat grains. However, I wasn’t prepared for how expensive grain free dog food actually was. The lady from the pet rescue said that Molly had been eating Fromm dog food, so I picked some up from the feed store. At the time I didn’t think $35 a bag was going to be a big deal. It was a big bag and it would last a while. But soon I noticed all the other things my dog would rather eat than her dog food. I couldn’t keep her out of the garbage or the cat’s litter box. She eats anything she can find, leaving her dog food untouched. We have pretty well solved the garbage problem, but the litter box is another story. I thought about a baby gate, but I don’t believe my fat, old cats would be able to make the leap every time they had to go. I also think it would be one more thing they would resent about the dog. They started crapping on the bathroom floor in protest as soon as she arrived. Ah, pet life. Never a dull moment.

My next lesson was what to do with her poop. We live in a zero lot neighborhood, so my tiny yard fills up with poop pretty quickly. I bought a scooper for the back yard, but the idea of scooping up biodegradable dog poop and putting it in a plastic bag in the dumpster just doesn’t sit well with me. If I leave the poop where it is, time and weather will work their magic and the poop will become part of the soil. If I put it in a plastic bag, it will sit in a landfill indefinitely. It makes no sense to me. I did some research and I learned that biodegradable poop bags are a thing, but that just irritated me. I understand at the dog park poop can become a problem. I mean, no one wants to step in it, and I sure don’t want my dog to roll in it, so I thought a nice compromise would be to bring a garden trowel and throw the poop over the fence. If I’m taking my dog for a walk and she poops on your nicely manicured lawn, I will pick up the poop, but understand that you and I can’t be friends, because our values are just too different.

The dog park has been another learning experience. I’m OK with dogs, it’s people I don’t like. When I take my dog to the park I like to let her run and sniff and play with other dogs while I read or catch up on school work, but occasionally I feel obligated to interact with the other people there. They do weird things like voice-over the dogs’ playing with one another. “Look! Barkley’s saying, ‘Let’s play!’, but Chopper’s like, ‘No! This human has treats!’ Ha ha ha!” I just stand there baffled, feeling like an outsider. My dog is better at communicating with people than I am. Dogs are so loving and accepting, which brings me to my last point. No one in the world loves me as much as my dog does.

From the moment Molly entered our lives, I felt that she wasn’t just looking at me, but through me. She can see into my soul. I had always heard about the friendship and loyalty of dogs, but the way this dog loves me is more than I deserve. I have a lot to learn about being a dog owner, and I may never be a full fledged ‘dog person’, but knowing that I have my dog’s unconditional love and acceptance makes the journey worthwhile. Now if I could only break her from eating cat turds…