The Puppy Paradox

Love, Chaos, & the Lies We Tell Ourselves

Reader Discretion Advised:

I want to be clear upfront: my work as a dog-sitter and the perspectives I’m about to share should not be seen as overlapping. Yes, my wife and I look after people’s homes and fur-babies while they’re away, and we do an excellent job of it. (Feel free to check out our house-sitting business landing page here.)

That said, sometimes you take on a job you weren’t prepared for. I believe it’s a sign of integrity to admit one’s shortcomings and share the lessons learned from these missteps. I’m hoping that the owners of the puppy in question, should they read this, can appreciate the spirit of humility in which I write. Because despite the stress Mary and I experienced... he’s truly not a bad dog. (Oof, that was hard to write.)

And for the concerned citizens: No dogs were harmed in the creation of this narrative. We always treat every dog we care for with utmost respect.

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I feel as though I’ve simultaneously woken from a fever dream and emerged from torturous imprisonment—though of course it was of my own design, purely a result of the elevated expectations I held of my own competence. Don’t we just love these painful life lessons?

So what happened?

I moved out of a house-sit earlier this week. It was for an angel of a corgi (male, 2.5 years old) and an absolute nightmare of a Doberman puppy (also male, 14 weeks old). 😰

(Not the puppy in question) Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

While we did an excellent job sitting for these dogs and looking after the house, we did NOT know what we were getting ourselves into. We simply weren’t prepared for what this particular job required—caring for a 14-week-old puppy stretched our sanity to the breaking point. Fortunately that did slowly shift as we learned effective systems to handle the challenges.

This may seem trivial to readers who have raised babies—human or canine. Or maybe those readers will reflect back on the days before their resolve was strengthened and relate to our harrowing experience.

What was so bad about looking after an adorable puppy who’s all legs and bounds around like a baby deer? He’s just a puppy after all; he doesn’t know any better!

The sit lasted five nights. The first two days left us utterly unequipped to handle the attention this puppy required. We had neither the knowledge nor the systems to handle the nearly constant urination and defecation inside the house, nor the incessant whining when he was safely sequestered in his pen (which he vehemently refused to pee in, thank goodness). But whining dogs top the list of things that wear my patience to the bone within seconds. It would be comical if it weren’t so infuriating—how quickly a whining dog makes me feel that thrusting my head through the nearest wall is the best solution.

Some readers know I have intimate familiarity with the darker corners of my psychology. I’ll be forthcoming enough to admit that during the earlier days of this dog-sit, my brain offered up some truly horrifying thoughts. I simply didn’t know how to handle the stimulus I was presented with, despite all I had read, studied, meditated, and journaled on. Mary witnessed this unraveling of my psyche as her equanimity was also severely challenged. Having the support of one another for the first three full days before her workweek resumed helped immeasurably in navigating the challenge of pacifying a creature we had zero understanding of how to pacify.

Photo by Yogendra Singh on Unsplash

To say the puppy was the primary stressor overlooks other factors (it rained most of the second day, causing the puppy to simply refuse to do his business outside). But I’ll stay focused on the main point.

Here’s my question to anyone who has pondered this or actually gone through with it:

WHY WOULD YOU EVER GET A PUPPY?

Okay, they’re cute. Sure, one day—many months later—they MAY become a cherished family member everyone recalls with warm memories long after the dog has passed. But have you ever had to care for one? Take them out to pee EVERY HALF HOUR FOR THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF THEIR LIFE?

When I say my sanity was legitimately hanging by a thread for the first 72 hours in that house, I’m not exaggerating. Ask my wife. We were wholly different people. It was scary. It was survival mode.

I recognize I’m naturally more dramatic than most, but that shouldn’t lead you to discount my perspective. It should reinforce the fact that basically everyone who’s raised a puppy from the point where you’re tracking their age in weeks (not months) and said anything close to “It wasn’t that terrible” was lying through their teeth. Unless it actually wasn’t that terrible—in which case, I want video proof from when they were a puppy, and/or journal entries from that time. Because I don’t believe you.

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Now, I’m aware enough of human psychology to recognize that mothers eventually forget how brutal childbirth actually is—the hormones influencing their decision to have another child are partly responsible for this selective amnesia. Perhaps this mechanism plays a part for those who survive the puppy years and consider getting another eventually.

But it’s undoubtedly different when it’s not your dog. I had to dig deep into my compassionate depths to not throw myself through the third-story bedroom window to escape the whining. The owners may have handled such a dilemma differently. I can only guess.

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So please, I’m inviting discussion about this divisive topic (recognizing the inherent irony of someone who runs a business depending on people who disagree with him about this crucial decision):

What compels a person to succumb to the MASSIVE cognitive, monetary, and temporal commitment of raising a creature from infancy to elderly age—a creature that can and will never contribute to restoring that investment of cognition, money, or time?

For those who haven’t had the conversations with dog owners I have (easily hundreds over four years of full-time work in this industry, plus trail encounters with non-client dog owners), I can tell you that most first-time dog owners didn’t know what they were getting into. Almost everyone seems to have initially gotten a dog because they know someone who has one. That person likely left out massive aspects of how much of a burden raising a dog is, and they felt enough FOMO to be persuaded to get one themselves. Then the sunk cost fallacy kicks in—despite any regret about pulling the trigger, they’re already too emotionally invested to give up the pup.

Am I wrong?

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Here’s the most ironic part (and I know this rant is getting out of hand, but I have so many feelings about this topic that’s been on my mind intermittently for FOUR YEARS):

There are dogs Mary and I regularly house-sit for whom I would be utterly bereft if their owners hadn’t adopted them! At least half a dozen of our regular clients—we’re basically fur-uncle and fur-aunt to them, and we love them with our whole hearts. One or two we’d even agree to adopt if their owners asked us to (now that they’re not puppies anymore, obviously).

So don’t get it in your minds that we don’t LOVE the dogs we look after. This recent puppy experience just opened our eyes to the reality of full-time caring for a non-potty-trained creature who needs your effectively undivided attention nearly constantly. And it left me with some genuinely pressing questions about human psychology.

I would so appreciate further conversation on this topic in the comments, in the Substack chat below, or via direct message.

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As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you got something worth pondering from this post.

May the winds of curiosity guide your sails to lands of knowledge yet unexplored.