Today, I Don’t Want to be a Dog Owner

I adore my sweet, sensitive cattle dog. She is one of the most incredible creatures I’ve ever known. I usually feel lucky — in the all-encompassing, makes-you-hold-your-breath way — that I get to share my life with her.

But today?

Today caring for another being feels like too much. Today I wish I could take a break, press pause, ask my heeler to run on autopilot so I don’t have to think about food and exercise and medication and social fulfillment.

Today I don’t want to be a dog owner.

Most moments with Scout are lovely and harmonious and surrounded by a soft rosy glow in my memory. Perfect beach trips, engaged games of tug, Instagram-worthy pictures of me and my best friend staring past each others’ eyes and into our souls (which seem inexplicably bound together).

But some of them are full of tears. Frustration. Find me crying on a sidewalk because the sweet dog I adopted from the shelter isn’t “normal”, because she felt the need to yell at a quiet Labrador from across the street, because she couldn’t pay attention to me around taunting squirrels, because it’s just so damn hard and I don’t know how to be perfect.

And we’re supposed to be perfect.

How can I pretend to know the next thing about dog training when my own heeler still has so many flaws? How can I share our experiences in good faith, provide encouragement to fellow dog lovers on their journeys, when our own bond can be so messy?

How can I express to love my dog the way I do — to wear her face on so many tshirts and her ears tattooed on my wrist, to tell everyone who will listen how incredible she is — when some days I feel like this?

Am I fraud? Weak? Just not cut out for something that, according to the Disney movies and romanticized novels, should actually be simple?

Most honest parents I’ve talked to express similar sentiments. They love their kids more than they ever imagined possible, and yet… inevitably they have a moment, an hour, a day or even a week where they just don’t want to be responsible for them anymore. Where they’re overwhelmed. Exhausted. Maybe even resentful, dancing with regret.

And I think that’s okay.

Pretending like Scout always brings me pure, uninhibited joy does a disservice to us both. Our relationship is more complex than that. Like any true lovers or friends, we have arguments. Conflicts. Different desires.

To act like we share nothing but unconditional harmony isn’t only lying — it’s also minimizing. It somehow diminishes the actual reality of our life together, the ups and downs, the juxtaposition, the way cooperation tastes so much sweeter when it’s hard-won after a moment of despair. The absolute commitment we both show each other even on days where we’d rather throw our hands and struggles and future to the wind. The fact that even though we don’t always like each other, there’s never been a real moment of doubt that we aren’t completely in love.

You aren’t a bad caretaker if you’re honest about the fact that sometimes things just plain suck. So I’ll admit it: Today, I don’t want to be a dog owner.

But I also can’t imagine being anything else.

Feeling the struggle? Related further reading

• How I Handle Getting Frustrated With My Dog
• Owners and Trainers: Your Dog Doesn’t Have to be Perfect
• My Relationship With My Dog is Like a Jar of Marbles
• Human Emotions and Growth Instagram guide
• Green, Yellow, or Red Framework Instagram post
• Guilt vs Shame Instagram post
• Fault vs Responsibility Instagram post
• Ways to bounce back Instagram post