This is certainly not the post I had in mind when I thought I was going to share on this topic.
My daughter and I adopted a dog. The sweetest dog I had ever met. She felt as if we had chosen each other – of all the dogs in the shelter, she chose us, and we chose her. We took her home. The first few days of adjusting to a new schedule and another being was difficult and nerve wracking, but also exciting.
Within a short week, I realized it was not working for me. I now had to bundle my daughter up in the morning, even before she had breakfast to take the dog out for a walk, and similarly later in the evening. The temperature was dropping to 30s and my sweet dog desired long walks before she even considered doing her business. I’m not the type of mom that would leave my kid out in my yard to play by herself, and I couldn’t do it to my dog either. I’d also been warned that she was a potential flight risk, which heightened my sensitivity even more.
Although my daughter had begged for a dog for 3 years, and we finally had one, I couldn’t allow her to hold the leash as the particular breed was a hunting dog – which means if she saw a squirrel – my daughter would either be dragged or she would completely escape. The dog also quickly became my dog – so she was following me around, and if we weren’t home – she was howling and barking.
I had to make the most difficult decision for all of us to return her. I cried. My daughter cried. And now, these are some of the lessons I learned as I assess what happened. If you know me, I’m a planner – so there was some planning that had gone into this decision.
Lesson 1: Don’t succumb to peer pressure. My neighborhood and my daughter’s friends all have dogs. One of her besties had just gotten a puppy – which probably motivated my thinking that I could manage one as well, and it became a lot easier to be talked into one.
Lesson 2: Don’t compromise on what you know to be true. For all the years that my daughter had been asking, I knew the reasons it did not make sense for a dog in this season. In theory, it sounded good at the outset, but once I was fully immersed, I realized and remembered why I had said no for the previous 3 years. Our family dynamics are different than all of her friends’.
Lesson 3: I tried and it didn’t work. It’s ok to try with things that are out of your realm of expertise. Unfortunately, in this instance, I feel as I failed as a dog mom because of my other life circumstances. It does not mean that we will never have a dog, it just means that in this season – I can’t manage a dog by myself and be a good mother to my daughter as I continue to grow in other areas.
There were so many other lessons that came from this, and I really wish I were sharing the thought I originally had when we got her instead of these hard lessons.
What hard decision have you had to make recently? What was the outcome?
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you that even in sadness that we can learn things. Help us to carefully consider the decisions that we make – especially those that impact others. Please give us wisdom to make the best choices.
