discovers a great new Irish gin
Pets are a serious business and one Sophie White is pretty sure she’s unqualified for, especially as she believed ducks were often kept as pets
“No one’s getting out of this relationship alive. One of you has to die, actually die, in order to cut ties”
We don’t have a pet currently and for very good reason. We’re barely managing to keep the humans in our home fed and washed as it is. Never mind adding a third dependant. Of course, I’ve heard the pet people extolling the benefits of keeping an animal in the house and giving it an adorable moniker and such. I’ve heard claims it fosters empathy in human young and, in a bid to ward off the family sociopathy, I suppose I should be considering it.
And, ya know, the five-year-old has started making mutterings. It’s what they do.
I used to look at people with kids and dogs and wonder how they got there, and I have been workshopping a highly accurate and peer-reviewed theory. I think it’s just hard for me to imagine that anyone truly wants a dog, ergo they must’ve been foisted on them.
No one is born a dog-lover, they become one in the hope that it’ll buy them a precious break from the haranguing of their children. Clearly the parents began fending off the whines of “I want a pet” with tokenism. They started small, handing over fish, hamsters and terrapins. And, eventually, as the children became numerous, the incoming animals grew, until finally a puppy was produced and the children were sated. For 10 minutes. Then it’s the parents getting up in the night to comfort a new furry baby.
And I get it. You do a lot of off-the-wall stuff for a let-up in the onslaught when you’re a parent. I, for example, let the two-year-old suction the sink plunger on to my face in the bath because I just couldn’t summon the will for another fight over something that in the long run doesn’t really matter.
However, with a puppy there’s a considerable long run involved. As the ad says, a puppy is not just for Christmas, but for a very long time after that. No one’s getting out of that relationship alive. One of you has to die, actually die, in order to cut ties.
Naturally my theory didn’t make me many friends. People, I find, are mistrustful of non-dog-lovers. Plus, as a friend pointed out, the theory doesn’t hold water. “Who’s going to love you once your kids hate you, Soph?” “My kids are going to hate me?” I squeaked. Yep. In this age of early onset adolescence, it transpires I only have a couple more years of affection from the older one, and all the dog-people I was going around pitying are actually fully on to something, playing an ingenious long game of love insurance.
So we’re starting small with a gateway pet; nothing too onerous. “A cat?” suggests Himself. I was plumping for a duck, but then realised no one keeps ducks, and in fact I was just hungry. This simple tasty dinner was perfect fuel to ponder the pet question.