Dog Mom vs. Kid Mom

This is a topic I know I visited at least twice before, and has probably been alluded to or mention almost weekly. But now I'm talking about it head on, plus I want to clear the air about some things. So are you ready? Because here we go, this might be a long one, but hey, there are pictures.

First, what is a dog mom? Well me, duh, but there's more to it. Missy is the center of my world. Her grooming and vet appointments, along with her daycare schedule are planned out and put on the calendar first. My day is organized around when she gets walked and fed and now when her blog and facebook page gets updated. My personal life takes a back sit to her potty breaks. Now there are plenty of people who love their pets too much. They put them on Christmas cards and dress them in silly outfits but that does not make these people dog parents. Missy is not my over loved pet, she is my child replacement. There is a difference.

So in this world, you can't be a dog mom and a kid mom. Your dog and your kids cannot compete with each other for space on your calendar or your to do list. Your kid better win, every time. I mean it. This is where the notion of the anti-kid mom mentality comes from.

When I say, dog moms are anti-kid moms this is not a knock on kid moms, at all. My own kid mom might kill me if I thought that. I happen to have one of the best kid moms ever and she helps me to be a good dog mom. Instead, this is just to differentiate. There are two states of mind and because it is socially less unacceptable to be a dog mom we tend to take more crap, I think, from the outside world as viewing us as not being moms at all. I went into this topic in earlier postings so I don't want to revisit it here. There's too much ground left to cover, so let's move on.

As a dog mom, I'm almost using Missy as my warm-up to parenthood. It's kind of like starting in triple A ball hoping to one day get to the major leagues. And for me, that's really all I have, hope. Some women might grow up thinking, "I'm going to have kids someday". That is a definite statement. I hope I'll have kids someday. I want nothing more than to be married and start a family. But as the years continue to pass, men I want to have kids with pass me by, and the few health problems I've run into that have doctors telling me, "it might be harder for you to get pregnant than most women, good thing you're young" the more scared I become that a trip to the majors just isn't in my future. Now lots of ballplayers spend their entire careers in the minors, and some women spend their whole lives without kids. That's a reality. So I have Missy.

My mom likes to tell me, "oh it will happen for you one day sweetheart." But I can name at least two women off the top of my head, in their 40's who never married and never had kids. Hey look at Jennifer Aniston.  Once again, fact.

My mom somehow thinks the fact that I am not certain about having kids and getting married means I have a negative attitude. But for me, it's about not getting my hopes up. That's what all the, "kids scare me, I'm glad I just have my dog," talk is really about. Not letting myself get too disappointed if it never happens. I love my Missaroo, she is my world and at the end of the day if I wasn't completely ok with that I would cry a lot more than I already do.