We have a fur baby. I know that term is kind of obnoxious to those who don’t have this kind of relationship with an animal. Trust me, I didn’t understand it myself before we found our little fuzz ball.
All it took was a little bit of play and then her curling up and falling asleep in Joel’s lap….
And we completely fell in love with all 2.2 pounds of her. I mean, look at this face, how could you not?
This is her at 8 weeks old on the ride home from the breeder. Gah! So cute! She looks so itty bitty and different here.
She just turned 4 years old on the 4th of March and is 6 pounds of love. She is well behaved (I can’t stand untrained dogs) but she’s also completely spoiled. I really do think of her as our baby.
Now we’re going to bring home a human baby any day now and I’m nervous.
It’s not that she hasn’t been around kids. We give her full run of things when we’re around my nephews and she’s fine around them. They’ve pulled and poked and even body slammed her and she’s barely even shown her teeth. She enjoys playing with them sometimes and when she gets sick of it she retreats to her kennel, jumps up somewhere out of reach or crawls into an adult’s lap.
But in our house she is the princess. She is technically crate trained and we started out wanting her to sleep in there or in the kitchen at nights…. but that only lasted for so long.
Yeah, I’m a complete sucker for that face.
She sleeps in bed with us every night. Usually at the foot of the bed but sometimes she decides she wants to cuddle and she’ll curl up in my armpit and I completely melt into a pile of goo.
But now there’s going to be a baby. A human baby. In “her” bed.
Granted, he has his own bassinet, I think I’ve pretty much decided against bed sharing. I’m not going to lie, a huge reason for that is because I cannot break Phoebe of sleeping in our bed. That really sounds so pathetic. I just can’t stand the crying when we try and get her to sleep anywhere else though. Part of it is sympathy and a part is pure laziness.
Still, there will be a crying infant in “her” room very soon. I just don’t know how she’s going to handle things. She won’t be the center of attention anymore. It kind of makes me sad. Am I super weird for being sad that I’m going to pay more attention to my son than my dog? Maybe don’t answer that.
Another thing I’m worried about is, in order to relieve some stress on our part about who would take care of her while we’re in the hospital, we have decided to take her to stay at my mother-in-law’s until after the baby is born. Now, don’t get me wrong, my mother-in-law is probably her favorite human on the planet. Yes, even more so than Joel or I. They adore each other. But still, she’s going to go away, likely for a couple of weeks, and when she comes home her whole world will be upside down.
I’m honestly having second thoughts about sending her away. The last time she was gone this long was when we were in India. And when we brought her home she promptly peed on our bed. The definition of pissed, I guess.
What in the world is she going to do after being gone that long and then coming home to this new thing that will take most of our time, energy and attention?
I really want them to love each other. I have this image of boy’s best friend. I want to hope she’ll be protective of him and patient and love him to death. But I’m afraid she’ll just be resentful and start acting out.
I don’t have very many ideas as to how to get her used to the idea of the new baby. I’ve thought of putting a blanket in bed with Wesley the first day or so and sending it home with my mother-in-law to give to Phoebe. At least that way she’ll be able to kind of get used to his smell. Other than that we’ve been showing her all his clothes and things as we sort and organize them. We talk to her all the time about “her kid.” We point to my belly and tell her there’s a kid in there and she gives us a look like we’ve completely lost it.
I also plan to ask visitors to say hello to her before they pay any attention to the baby. She seriously adores people and already acts a bit hurt and confused when every stranger on the street doesn’t want to stop and say hi to her on walks.
I can only imagine how put out she’ll be if she gets omg visitors! to her home and they completely ignore her in favor of this new little creature we’re bringing home. People may think we’re ridiculous but I really think just a minute or two of them petting her would go a long way in making her resent Wesley a little less.
Those are my only ideas. I would really love any and all insight from you all. Are we completely stupid to send her away right before we drop this change bomb on her? For those of you who had a fur baby before your human baby, how did the transition go? Anything we can do to make this easier on her and us?