My Attempt At Being The Cool Fun Mom On Mother's Day Failed Wonderfully, But What A Learning Experience

What was my post about yesterday? Oh how I'm super anxious, overly sensitive and really need clear boundaries? Enter good intentions gone to shit, excuse my french.

So, Mother's Day, when you're married to a man who essentially runs or manages a restaurant, is the worst. Not only does he always work, but if he didn't, he wouldn't dare take you out anywhere, because he knows it will be packed and quality will go down more often than not. I'm okay with staying in, and this morning I had a gorgeous start to my day. I should have expected anything but smooth sailing, in retrospect.

So, I had to take my daughter to get a hair cut. Super easy. She did great. And the bribery? We were going to pet puppies. We've been talking about puppies a lot. About a month ago on a distant mom friend's Instagram feed I saw her take her children, 6 and 8 or 9 I think, to pet puppies at PetLand two towns south of us. We used to work right next to a PetLand in Lutz and my husband and I would play with the puppies and argue about how expensive they were.

So, I have zero intention of buying a puppy, but I just wanted some puppy cuddles. We go straight for the golden retriever. Immediately my daughter gets overwhelmed by the puppy jumping, nipping and being all over. The puppy pees and poops in the little area and my daughter stands on the little bench to get someone's attention and we just hang in the stench a few minutes. They ask me to stand back and hold the puppy.

Here is the most important thing. They give us no information about the puppy except it's a girl. They give us no guidelines about anything. They don't check on us. And finally we get out of the pooped and peed confined space. My daughter asks if we can have another puppy. She picks one that looks like a small Dachshund-chihuahua looking thing. 

We get put in another pen with a bench, maybe an inch higher than a couch in it, and off we go. My daughter likes this one and we play on the floor for a good 10 minutes. I have to ask what kind of dog this is and hear it's some kind of small grayhound? I'm still unsure. So my daughter asks if she can sit on the bench with the puppy after the puppy pees in the corner and leaves a mess so she doesn't get pee on her. 

The puppy squirms from my daughter sitting, jumps off the bench, but slips on the slippery concrete and bonks it's butt on the door. It then sits up, starts yelping at us and whimpering. I didn't know if it was a bark. Immediately out of nowhere a female employee comes over and yells at us "What happened!?" She started the puppy and it moves slowly around. She said, "Why is it limping?!, in a very mean tone?" I said, "I don't know, it jumped from the bench." She immediately gave my daughter the stink eye and said "You're not supposed to have the dogs on the bench. We have to take him to the kennel now to make sure he can walk!" My daughter burst into tears because the puppy was taken away.

I was completely mortified. The puppy was just being a puppy. Puppies jump. They jump off of high places. They slip, they trip, they bonk. Our pug got his paw stuck in a bench and yelped murder once. A friend of ours had a chihuahua mix break it's leg and have it in a cast. Puppies are just puppies. I dragged my child out of the store crying.

I had my whole range of anxious emotions. First, I was worried about the puppy and felt like some shamed animal abuser. I don't even spank my kid when she deserves it. Then I was angry someone made my kid cry. Then I sighed and was like, "Maybe that woman is having a really bad day. After all, she cleans up animal piss and feces all day. Then I calmed my child. Her first reaction was being disappointed that they took the puppy, then that we couldn't see any more puppies.

I wasn't trying to see any puppies after that lady made me feel so horrible, trust me. And the guy "helping us," was like "Have a nice day," and didn't seem to care at all about the situation so yeah. I had a moment of feeling like, wow this is a horrible place. But then I made another questionable decision, which was to hit another puppy store down the road.

This one was even sadder, and it smelled bad. We found one cute beagle mix that was calm. My daughter said, "I just want like a calm puppy mom." I told her that doesn't exist.

It was the official departure from all things puppy we had a talk in the car. I asked my daughter, "Honey you're not upset because you somehow think you hurt that puppy, are you?" She quickly snapped back, "I didn't hurt that puppy mom." I said, "No, baby you did not. That puppy got hurt being a puppy." We talked more.

I said, "How often does Brodie fall and bonk? He jumped off your loft bed! Remember Jaxie had to be careful when Aunt Stacey came to visit because Jaxie just got her cast off? Brodie limped when he had a weird growth on his foot. Puppies are puppies! I'm so sorry that woman made you feel badly."

She's doing a bit better now, and boy what a learning experience. Not only am I convinced that having a puppy is not for us right now, but certainly not from one of those places. It's sad but true. Maybe when the Humane Society is open we'll go love on some dogs.

Besides the off kilter teaching experience it's been a good day. We are now relaxing before early dinner with Grandma but I had to share the crazy mania.