The "Animal"

I've always had some-what of a love-hate relationship with Mike's dog, Lucy. She's cute sometimes and can be fun to take to the park and play ball with, she is potty-trained and listens to Mike really well... at the same time, she can be a terror and need too much attention which, more often than not, gets really annoying. But, when I met Mike 4 years ago, she was already in the picture and I accepted the fact that being with Mike meant that I'd have to live with the dog too.

Soon after Shane was born, everyone started asking how the dog was acting with the new baby around. At first everything seemed fine. She would smell him and seemed a little curious but didn't take too much care into the new addition to our family. Only to find out in the last couple of weeks that dogs throw tantrums just like humans do - only they don't yell and scream about it, they mark their territory in your house! Yes!! As painful as this is for me to even write about, it's true. A couple of weeks ago, during Shane's first growth spurt and after a long night of feeding Shane in our living room, we finally made it to bed and somewhere between 5:30am and 8:30am, Lucy managed to pee on our couch! We knew it wasn't a potty-training issue because she is well trained and doesn't typically expel in our house but needless to say, it was frustrating and we had to take the covers off, wash them and replace the filling. Not fun!

To try to solve this issue, Mike has been diligent about spending time with his dog, who I now refer to as "the animal," I would even say, almost a little more time with her than he does with Shane and she was good for another week. Well, the other day, Shane was going through another growth spurt so I was up a good deal of the night feeding more often and sure enough, somewhere between 5:30am and 7:30am, Lucy managed to jump into Shane's crib and peed all over it! Thank goodness Shane is in our room sleeping in a bassinet or I would have personally dropped Lucy off at the dog pound that morning, but I was livid. Mike took everything out of the crib and threw it all in the washer and again, thankfully we had a mattress protector that kept the actual mattress from getting ruined, but it doesn't take away from the feelings the "animal" validates for me - I will never call her my own.

A small part of me felt a little like she was maybe "acting" up against me since I no longer pay attention to her now that my time is consumed with Mike and Shane and it seemed that it only happened when he was up during the night that she did it, but I still don't care and it's very frustrating. To resolve this issue, Lucy has given up her morning, afternoon, and evening freedom and is going to be locked in her kennel at night to prevent more disasters from happening again...