Dog Training and Child Rearing

I think I've mentioned it before: if you can take care of a dog you can raise a kid. But I realized today that I should refine that statement. (Note: refinement does not equal flip-flop. I'm just clarifying and expanding.)

I was talking to someone about a mutual acquaintance who has owned dogs for a long time and may, at some point soon, have children. This is someone who does not want children. When I pointed out that he has had these dogs forever, I was informed that the dogs have always been wild, completely untrained and vicious biters.

Oh.

Not a good sign for parenting skills.

See, training a dog requires endless patience, love, and understanding of nonverbal communication. Taking care of a dog means being responsible for it 24 hours a day, every day. You can't skip meals, you have to stick to some kind of a schedule, this other creature is entirely dependent on you. An infant or toddler is very little different--you just scoop the poop up differently. Also, children are slightly more responsive to books.

But allowing a dog to be untrained and vicious, that's not love and it's not a good idea. Allowing a toddler to be untrained and vicious, also not a good plan.

Here's Dogness, alas only semi-trained (draw what conclusions you will):

The picture was taken by GirlChild for her photography class, so obviously is all copyrighted and stuff. I have permanent permission, as her mother, to use it. Note the rug--it's actually a camel saddlebag from Afghanistan. What you can't see in the black and white photo is the distinctive red forming the background, unique to rugs from that area.

Comments

[Chris]

What a soulful look!

[Jill]

Dogness is, of course, gorgeous.

And if someone can't train a dog, I am also fearful for their children. Sheesh.

[Mariya]

Even I agree with you that training a dog requires endless patience, love, and understanding of nonverbal communication. I had a lot of problems with one of my dogs and I had no idea how to deal with it. My dog would bark constantly, break everything that she would get her mouth around, steal food from the table, run after cars. She even tried to bite the neighbor's kid. I was so frustrated with all her annoying behaviors that were driving me crazy. I got sick and tired of not being able to control her. Anyways nice post... Thank you for sharing.