I once had a coworker whose face turned a gorgeous fuchsia when I referred to my young chow-akita ex–street dog, Max, as my child. The parent of a young human, she was also, I think, not a dog person. We proceeded to strenuously and pointlessly argue about whether it was the same or different, raising a Homo sapiens baby and rearing a pet. I pointed to large patches of common ground amid the obvious qualitative distinctions, but she stayed the same shade of fuchsia and seemingly the same degree of irked. Of course, my fur baby had once pooped in someone’s office at our publication. But then again, a friend’s toddler, temporarily pantsless and diaperless, once pooped on the floor in my dining room.
I toyed, post-debate, with not trying to bond with any more parents of human babies. But I couldn’t censor myself. I am a dog mom, and I must speak my insane truth. And how insane is it, really? Sure, these people are grappling with sleeplessness, but what do you call it when Max’s successor, Bobby, a long-haired shepherd mix, awakens my partner and me at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. to announce his tummy troubles by clawing at our fragile single-pane San Francisco bedroom windows? Yes, it’s an anxious experience to drop your little one off with strangers at daycare—which we learned after realizing that we couldn’t trust this mouthy, satanic creature not to destroy our home while we were out. And of course it’s no fun to discover that your child is having socialization problems at school. We know this because of a shameful phone call regarding a humping-biting incident during playtime.
This article appears in Issue 36 of Alta Journal.
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We also know something about bringing home a small creature who, hour by hour, day by day, reshapes your life and seizes your heart, causing it to ache and melt and backflip. One who, month by month, year by year, becomes a distinct and irreplaceable family member whose movements and mannerisms and ways of being in the world require hypervigilance, documentation, and absurd tribute songs. This, too, feels like parenting to me.
I’ve found, over the years—particularly in San Francisco, where people regularly and fondly mention that the city has more dogs than children—that many folks with human kids actually don’t mind when you draw comparisons, when any childhood-development milestone they glowingly bring up is met by an equally cheery “That’s just like with my dog!” Sometimes it’s just like their dog, too. Of course, many of Bobby’s milestones have been entry-level tricks from YouTube training videos—disciplinary triumphs that are definitely in the rearview mirror, our son having reached a double-digit age at which he finds parental dictates meaningless (just like a human teenager!).
Still, we persist in bragging about Bobby’s other accomplishments—having CGI-esque eyes, knowing how to use a pillow, growing old-man hairs out of his ears—including in my family group chat. There, Bobby content does not fare as well as news of our small human niece, engagement-wise. And this stings a bit, I won’t lie. But in fairness, I do watch the niece’s rock-climbing videos on repeat, and her veterinarian parents’ love language has been dispensing countless hours of free medical advice to two anxious dog moms.
Striking out in the family group chat, we turn for affirmation to the (IRL) group chat in Dolores Park’s dog zone, which has evolved into what I would call a full-on parents’ group—and friend group. There have been holiday parties and a movie night and a silent-reading-club spin-off. And it all started on a poorly drained grassy slope where we monitor roughhousing, facilitate parallel play, and hand out snacks (usually freeze-dried). While the conversations range far beyond our furry kids, it’s also a safe, comforting space in which to hyperfixate on them. We zero in on their moods and friendships and idiosyncrasies (obsession with a specific brand of blue-and-orange ball, hatred of puppies). We wonder whether the burrito-size glob of mud one of them—fine, Bobby—just devoured had weed in it. (“Don’t take drugs!” I tell him, channeling Frances McDormand in Almost Famous.)
As hard as explaining cause and effect to a human child may be, our son, now a Dolores Park elder with diagnosed “dietary indiscretion,” will be snatching discarded, potentially lethal chicken bones out of the grass until the end of his time with us. See…not like a human child, my old coworker might like to tell me. So much worse, I would say.
On one of those euphoric days in the Mission district when the fog doesn’t turn the late afternoon into a neighborhood-size refrigerator, I walk through the park with Bobby. The place is packed with inebriated Zoomers, and the parents’ group has scattered. We inch along the path like, you guessed it, a mom and her toddler—if a toddler were investigating each clump of grass for canine scents and squashed picnic remains. But our aging baby boy is now mostly deaf, stiff of gait, and destined to crush our hearts one of these days, the way all these furry, short-lived nonhuman people do. I stop to sit on a bench near a couple who are entertaining visiting relatives. They fall in love with Bobby for a few minutes—he looks like a long-gone family dog. Later I hear the woman tell her visitors about friends who go on canine playdates and, inevitably, how in San Francisco there are more dogs than children. Dogs are children, I restrain myself from interjecting. Maybe they know. The chill drops over us eventually, and I coax my child away from his new friends with a freeze-dried minnow, and we head toward home.•
