I’m a bona fido dog lover, but stop telling me a fur baby is the same as a kid

At the risk of inviting every devoted dog parent over to my front yard to let Fido drop one on my lawn, I ask, oh so tentatively, that you stop comparing dog ownership to early parenthood.

Just hold up, put the leash back in the cupboard, take off your windcheater, and hear me out before posting my picture to your dachshund Facebook group with “CANCELLED” plastered across it. I can’t overstate this – I love dogs. I am a bona fide “dog person”. I also love cats, I love rabbits. Look – you get it – I’m not anti-canine. I’m so pro-animal I haven’t eaten one in nearly 20 years.

Child’s play? Not quite.Credit: Shannon Morris

But since having a kid, I’ve found myself in conversations with dog owners who genuinely believe they’ve experienced, pretty much, the same thing. The same mind – eroding fatigue, unrelenting worry, the same overall life renovation that new parenthood bestows upon its willing victims.

A friend who used to run a daycare centre told me she was certain the experience she had with her puppy was tougher than what she’d seen of new parenthood. Similarly, while travelling for work, a colleague noticed I was flat, and when I told him, “Oh, I’m just missing my baby”, he looked me square in the face and said, “I totally get it. I haven’t been away from my dog this long before and I didn’t realise how much I’d miss him.”

I can see where the confusion lies. Last week, on a beach walk with my toddler, I passed another woman with a pram. At the time, I was being instructed to simultaneously squeeze my son’s squeezy yoghurt, get his water, and surrender my phone so he could watch Blippi. My counterpart was having a comparably peaceful stroll because her pram contained a plump little sausage dog and not a furious-for-no-reason two-and-a-half-year-old. Same-same but quite different, no?

Recently out at drinks with a mix of parents and child-free dog parents, the two couples who excused themselves early were doing so to get home to their anxious pups, and honestly, I love to see it. This is responsible pet ownership – it’s a far cry from my well-to-do neighbours who leave their nervous cavoodle home alone all day to bark incessantly in protest. So, yes, good, responsible fur-baby parents possess similar traits to good, responsible skin-baby parents. But I’m afraid the gig just ain’t the same.

Pups demand a lot of physical and emotional input. And I would be lying if I said I hadn’t referred to my little one as a “good dog” when he learned to fetch the TV remote. But, unlike kids, at six months old you can leave Rex outside in his kennel overnight without risking intervention from law enforcement.

I’ll concede that for some, there’s a case to be made for the first six months with a challenging puppy versus the first six months with a particularly easy baby. But unless you can afford full-time help, parenting tiny people is a relentless slog, which grows even more so as they do. My now three-year-old is an angel but parenting him is far more punishing now than when he stayed in one place and couldn’t screech at me to get him a banana while actively eating one.

Parenthood gets tougher before it gets easier if it ever does (I’m yet to meet someone who says parenting teens is a cakewalk). Plus, it’s a lifelong commitment. You’re lucky if you get more than 15 years with a dog.

I’m not looking for any awards for choosing to have a kid. I’m bloody lucky to have one in the first place. Just last week, while painting on toner, my beautiful hairdresser told me about his “baby”, Ned, a too-cute-to-be-real cavalier he’d adopted after three failed rounds of IVF.

“Ned was my grief puppy,” he said, and he’s in good company when it comes to finding solace in canine companionship in the absence of kids, whether by choice or by circumstance. My empty-nester parents couldn’t be without the company of a rescue dog or two, and after losing one only a month ago, the grief for them is still very palpable.

I couldn’t imagine a world without dogs because, honestly, I think they’re better company than a lot of people. They’re just not kids.

I do see why this position can feel invalidating for some. It’s a sticky subject as one Redditor learnt after receiving death-threat DMs in response to his post on “unpopular opinions” titled, “Having a dog is not comparable to having a child”. Those who love dogs love them fiercely, and it’s a beautiful thing. It’s just not the same thing as loving a kid.

There’s a reason some couples opt for fur babies over human babies. On balance, they’re drastically lower maintenance. And while I get that pup parenthood might feel like people parenthood at times, let’s not pretend it’s as hard. Even if he digs up the yard, you can leave Marley at home by himself all day without going to prison.

Hannah Vanderheide is a freelance health writer and actor.

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