Not Your Typical Dad

I never saw what a good dad really looked like until I saw my husband become one to our dog. While having a canine child is not the same as having a human child, there are times when for us it seems comparable. We adopted an adult dog about three years into our marriage when we, or rather I was really feeling the urge to expand our family. I had always had dogs growing up, but his experience was more limited than mine, nonetheless he was also looking forward to bringing a four-legged friend home.

When we really started putting the effort into the search it became a part time job; joining rescue groups, looking through pages of profiles searching for the right fit for us, and attending weekend adoption events. We thought our wallets and hearts would be fuller with a rescue and we wanted to adopt an adult dog both because at that time our apartment would not be very conducive to potty training and we knew that puppies always get adopted first, leaving the older dogs to wait longer for their forever homes. One weekend we went to an adoption event and described what we were looking for to a volunteer, an adult dog who met our apartment’s restrictions of being under a certain weight and doesn’t have the obvious look of a “bully” breed. They happened to have a dog there that met that description and brought her out to meet us. If I’m being honest, it wasn’t love at first sight, she was indifferent to us as she had become attached to her current foster dad and we were skeptical of her, even though she was cute, her foster dad was not doing a good job of convincing us she would be the right fit. However, we knew that she was as close as we had found to the dog we were looking for and went ahead with the adoption. Luckily, with time, she bonded to us and showed us the personality that we didn’t get to see at the adoption clinic, finding that she was a better match for us than we could have hoped for.

This journey has not been without its many challenges though, many that seemed so overwhelming to me, but my husband has always kept his cool throughout. We knew that our new little fur child had some dog reactivity issues which seemed mild at first but seemed to grow as she became attached to us more and more. We also found out that she has some major separation anxiety issues; we’ve heard bits of her story and it sounds like she had belonged to several families and stayed in several foster homes in her few years of life before she came to us. So, what we thought the budget for having a dog would be increased dramatically when we found out that we would need to take her to multiple training classes for reactivity plus pay for dog-walkers and then daycare if we were both going to be away at work for a whole day. Thank the heavens that she does ok in day care when we’re not there although she prefers to go for the people rather than the socialization with other dogs.

Each year has been filled with stories of new scenarios that our pup has got into and luckily my husband has been here to help me keep my sanity. The first year we had a sudden death in the family and had to unexpectedly leave her with friends while we traveled out of state, we came back to find that she had been left outside of her kennel for a short time and had destroyed their door so what turned from paying them for the babysitting turned into also paying for a door. Another time, we found out that she also couldn’t be left in the car by herself when my husband came out of the store to find a seatbelt cut in the car….the driver’s side seatbelt. It definitely seemed like a very calculated revenge strategy if you ask me. We experimented with ways to keep her calm when she had to be in her kennel; CBD treats, chewing treats, music, a fan, and even a thunder shirt which I came home to not only find that she had been able to remove it herself but had torn it to shreds. Any kind of blanket that was placed in there would also be torn to shreds the same day and any treats we placed in there as a way to keep her occupied would go untouched until she was released from her prison. We eventually had to settle on a prescribed medication from the vet because we quickly found out why her teeth had been so worn when we adopted her, she was pulling on the kennel and breaking her teeth.

All of these anxiety issues occurred in conjunction with her reactivity issues, every time we would take her on a walk, she would act great until a dog walked/ran/bounced by and then she would turn into the fed after midnight version of a gremlin. This hasn’t been helped by the fact that so many people walk their dogs off leash and when their dog runs up to us they just shout that they’re friendly. The many incidents of dogs running up to us and there being a tussle only made our dog more anxious on walks and in turn made me more anxious. Now our pup had already bonded to my husband first because she is one of those few dogs that prefers men to women. She especially loves a man in uniform and has no qualms embarrassing us by trying to pull us over to one. So, while I was doing equal caretaking from the beginning she preferred my husband and when my anxiety kicked in it just pushed them closer together especially when, it felt like she was at peak reactivity and, my husband took over the walks more.

This is when we started doing training classes, we just really needed to learn from a professional how to help her and ourselves stay calmer. I wish that the classes worked instantaneously but nothing in life works like that and it has been a continual process of working with her on a daily basis, there is no just going for a walk, there is always an instance of relying on our knowledge to get through some sort of situation. My husband has not only always stayed calm in each situation while I often became anxious along with our dog, but he has fully embraced dog-dad life by always carrying treats, sometimes in a fanny pack, and not being afraid to scoop poop, usually several times on each walk.

He's also been our rock with each health scare and incident we have gone through from the time I accidentally stomped on her foot during a run and was worried I broke it, only to find that it was just a sprain after an expensive vet visit, to the time I ran into her while we were skiing and we had to take her for an emergency vet visit on the weekend for stitches. I guess you could say he’s been very understanding with both of us since he never blamed me for any of the accidents we got into together. When I found a small lump where her breast tissue is, he listened to me when I insisted she needed to get it checked out at the vet and one more expensive visit later she had a large portion of tissue removed which luckily turned out not to be cancerous. As she was going through the recovery for that she ended up wetting the bed a couple of times, usually on my side of course, but he never overreacted or got mad at her, he was so understanding and knew that it wasn’t her fault and just went about cleaning everything up. Because of their special bond our dog usually sleeps on my husband’s side of the bed and therefore goes to him as the parent to wake up when she needs or wants something in the nighttime hours. From vomiting to bathroom breaks to just feeling hungry or fidgety he gets up with her and lovingly tends to her needs never with anger or malice even if it was something that she knows should’ve waited until the morning.

And even though our life with a dog looks much different than what we thought it would, like always getting up early on the weekends to go on a walk or hike so that we beat the crowds, my husband has adjusted amazingly and has become the best dog dad a pup could want. He spends time researching food, worries about whether her 4 beds around the house are enough beds, and gazes with adoration at her when she runs in her sleep. He has become the champion of learning to change his expectations while I sometimes lament about not being able to take her to the dog park or play with a pack of friend’s dogs, he has become her biggest cheerleader. He’ll say that while he knows it might not be a huge accomplishment for other dogs he is so proud of her for getting through our latest hike without incident or for sitting in the car for a few minutes on her own while we are in the store. He reminds me often of how good we do have it since she acts so calm when it is just the three of us at home and how she doesn’t tear things up or bark too much. He makes sure to praise her for all of her accomplishments but to also give her love when she has had a bad day since that’s when she needs the most reassurance from us. He laughs at her little personality quirks and he made us both teary when as we were moving, finally to a house of our own, he noticed she was excessively anxious and noted that this was probably the first move she ever made where she got to stay with her current family. I have known my husband for a long time, we met as teens just entering college and I have seen him grow into an amazing man and now a wonderful father. He might not be a traditional dad, but he’s still the best I’ve ever met.