A Boy and His Dog
I honestly wasn’t sure how this was going to work out — bringing a newborn into a home where an 85 pound American Bulldog was the center of attention. I had so many unanswered questions. Will he be jealous? Is he going to want to eat him? What if he thinks the baby is a toy? How many times will he wake him from barking? And because our dog is such a lover, how often is he going to try and lick his face?
I think any parent would be concerned merging a large “aggressive” dog (I used the air bunnies because I heard it every time we looked at renting) and a fresh new born child. I mean, they are so little and helpless, I was still concerned about the fragile state of our child. It was a process whenever I was picking him up or putting him down or changing his clothes. I did everything so slowly and carefully to make sure that I didn’t harm our child. I just remember thinking, “Oh watch his head, support his neck, his arm doesn’t bend that way so this outfit doesn’t work” and that’s just to name the ones I can remember off hand.
Back to the dog, Russ. Once we were home, he made sure to get some good sniffs near the new addition. We weren’t sure on the best distance to keep between these two, so I made sure to keep Russ at least a good Heisman distance in the case I needed a strong stiff arm to keep him away. The one thing that Russ made sure of was that wherever we were with the baby, he was literally right behind us. Seriously, if one of us stopped too fast we would have had a cold, wet nose up our behind.
The first scream. I can’t remember if we had been home a day or few days (they all kind of mixed together for a few weeks) before our little guy had his first solid scream. He needed to be changed and wasn’t having any of it. Before we knew it, Russ was right there while we were trying to change and calm down a screaming newborn. Being first time parents, this is the worst. You never really have an idea on what works to calm down your newborn child. Do I talk to him? Is it best if I do that shhhh thing? Should I sing or hum? Who knows, but we had two grown adults doing everything we could to make that stop and get a fresh diaper on a clean booty.
Well, as it seemed, everything was going 100 miles an hour, and Russ somehow found a way to throw us into the next gear. All of a sudden we had two crying children. Really, it was one screaming child and a whining dog, but two crying children works. Now, every time we changed him it was as if my wife was trying to calm down our screaming child and I was consoling our whining dog.
Over the last six months there have been days that I wanted to turn our dog over to a new owner, days that he frustrated me beyond belief with our little guy, and days he down right made everything so much more difficult. Like the time he had a tumor on his side 8 days into our newborns life and had to have surgery to remove it. Or a week after when he had a double ear infection and I spent 5 hours at the Animal ER on a Sunday. Sadly, these issues are nothing new to us and this dog.
Russ constantly wants to lick our little guys face, supervise everything we do with him, and make sure that he is always within sight. However, that dog makes our little guy smile and laugh constantly. The two have become best friends and I can confidently say that Russ is now his dog. The way that Russ can snuggle up on his blanket and make our little one smile is beyond me. I mean this dog stinks and slobbers everywhere, something they have in common. I am now looking forward to the time these two run around the house together, when Russ is chasing a ball that our little guy throws, and of course the countless times Russ will knock him over. It has been so much fun to watch my son develop his first true best friend.
