Weighing the pros and cons of a dog's haircut

Dogs + babies is a combo that many people have an opinion on. The baby-only set seemingly count the days until you get rid of the furry flea bags in favor of your snuggly friend of the human variety. Avid dog owners are often far more interested in the emotional state of your dogs since the baby arrived than the drooly, noisy, fetch-inept bundle you recently welcomed into your home. And then there are those of us with the babies and the dogs. We are mostly just tired.

Do we regret getting dogs? Let me answer your question with a question: Can you capture a rainbow in a jar? I'm not sure where I am going with this - as I pointed out, I am quite tired - but I think it's that both are unanswerable and neither are particularly useful. To the dog naysayers, I must be honest: you are right. Dogs are very difficult to add to having a new baby, and the automatic priority that your child will have makes their burden difficult to swallow many times. To the pro-dog folks: we have 'em, we still love 'em, and no one is making Schnoodle mittens around here ... any time soon ...

Besides Sugar's intense fear of doors swinging, items dropping on the floor, her collar, her leash, being kicked off the bed, baths and the baby, she's not so bad, I guess. Then there is Billy with his psycho-somatic stomach troubles, triggered by guests leaving, the baby crying, thunderstorms and fireworks, resulting at times in colon-control issues, bleeding ulcers and massive vet bills. We get by with him too. But it's the dog grooming that has really put us over the edge lately.

As you'll see in the picture, they look positively dapper. And with good reason. We take them to an inordinately expensive Hund-salon, two train rides away, where we are verbally abused and chided for our dog care practices. Because they are poodle mixes, hair cuts are not optional. We tried an at-home solution once with some horse clippers when we were at Will's parents' farm, but that ended up taking a very long time to end up with a very strange looking dog. Not to mention that Will decided to get clever and carve a "B" into Billy's fur, the results of which were closer to mange than hair art.

We found the Hund-salon shortly after arriving, its primary selling point being that the owner advertised in and spoke English. After picking up my dogs the first time, 9 months pregnant, panting from the trek across ice and through several inches of snow, only to be told that my dogs had been in "terrible condition" and that I would be charged extra, I sighed deeply and resolved not to return. But then I saw the dogs. They looked fantastic, and I could tell by their demeanor that they were treated very well. The next time I arrived in as much snow and ice, this time with a 10 week old baby strapped to me. Same speech, but again, happy and gorgeous dogs. So then I decided to ramp up my own dog grooming practices, and the next time the groomer was thrilled with me! (Thrill is expressed rather solemnly in Germany, but trust me, she was thrilled.) The thing is, those 3 seconds of praise cost me 20+ hours of dog brushing over the previous months. But, I've persisted, reasoning that it's good for the pups anyhow.

This most recent time, however, marked the end. We can handle criticism over our lack of care for Sugar's matting coat. You can tell me that Billy's nails are too long. Though our perspectives are different, I can see your point. But this last time, Will was put through a hard sell on ... dog strollers. He said to me "They wanted us to buy a stroller. For the dogs. We are not going back." You see, this was a point when his baby priorities reared up in stark contrast to dog priorities. Though we try to live diplomatically in the worlds of both dog lovers and proud parents, the canine extremists drove us too far this time.

Wish us luck in finding an adequate dog groomer. I don't think we're in the market for a great one any more.