Hair of the dog

I want many things. I want an addition on our house to add on a new bathroom, enlarge Colette's room and bring the guest room upstairs. I want Yard Crashers to crash my yard and make it over in spectacular style. (That just reminded me to make my daily entry for the DIY network America's Most Desperate Landscape Giveaway.) I want to go on a trip, without kids, to the Greek Islands yet at the same time manage to NOT miss them. But then I'd feel guilty for not missing them. So let's add guilt-free onto that as well.

But right now, what I REALLY want, is a dog.

I can't get past it. All it takes is one person posting a picture of a rescue dog and the longing starts all over again, even in the face of Colette's "moderate to severe" dog allergy diagnosis. I vacillate from looking into labradoodle breeders, to "well we had a dog until she was 2 and she was fine so she'd probably be fine with a regular dog, we'd just have to test it out," to ditching the idea altogether, and back again. It's a neverending cycle. I'm always somewhere in it, but the desire to have a dog again never goes away no matter at what point in the cycle I find myself.

Tonight I found three labradoodle siblings on Petfinder - "The three stooges," as they're called. Four months old, SO cute, but not guaranteed hypoallergenic. The puppies in the ad are "too young" to tell, said the rescue in their description. Which I believe is another way of saying "We don't know who the parents are, and we don't know if the dog is third generation or more, so we just have no idea." That started it up again. I started talking to Zach. Maybe we could get one that we could return if it doesn't work out... come up with a story to tell the kids that we're dogsitting for one of Zach's coworkers just in case she has a reaction, and if not we could just say "Surprise! This is our new dog!" A true YouTube success story video. It could work.


One of the stooges in question.

So tonight, while making the bed, this is how the conversation between Zach and me went.

Me: You're getting me a labradoodle for Mother's Day, aren't you?
Zach (laughing): I'd have to hate my sweet baby girl an awful lot to do that.
Me: Why? Lots of people who have allergies are not allergic to labradoodles!
Zach: Well, then find one and let's start testing her out with it.
Me: That's what you were supposed to have been doing all these weeks leading up to Mother's Day.
Zach (laughs): Yep, that's right, I did. I've been keeping the dog in the basement. I hope it's ok, I haven't heard from it in a while... (gets into bed)
Me: Goodnight, evil dream killer. I hope your conscience lets you sleep.

Now, I can't stop staring at these dogs on Petfinder. Two male and one female. They're in NJ, too, through Oodles of Doodles Rescue, which is good because they won't adopt them out farther than a 50-mile radius. Maybe it's worth going to take a look at them.

I remember the old days of trolling Petfinder, searching for the perfect pet. I always wanted a lab, around 6 months old, already housebroken. I got that dog, or at least a version of it, in 2000 when I adopted Lily. She was a lab mix, and it turns out that what she was mixed with was maniac. She looked labbish, but didn't act it - she was fairly high strung and hated strangers and strange dogs. So several years later, after she died of liver disease, I started poking around on Petfinder again. In the beginning, it was just to look. After about 2 years had elapsed since her passing, we decided we were ready to start looking in earnest. That's when a visit to a local shelter ended up with Colette in hives after a dog's mouth touched her face, and suddenly our search for a new family pet came to a screeching halt. It was a sad, sad day, and a trip to the allergist confirmed my fears: moderate to severe dog allergy for Colette.


Alexander and Lily

The thing is, I'd never seen her have a reaction before. She was already 2 years old when Lily died, and while I never allowed her to roll on the floor and be covered in slobbery kisses by the dog, she never had an allergic reaction just by being in the same house as her. She never had a problem when visiting friends with dogs. And, if you want to be technical about it, I'm allergic to dogs too - it's mild, but it's there, and I knew even as a kid that I couldn't lie down with the dog too long and allow myself to be covered in her smell and her sloppy kisses. Because in my case, I knew that if I would lie with dogs, I'd get up... with hives.

A recent episode of Dogs 101 profiled the labradoodle, which immediately turned Alexander into a fan the moment he heard "good for people with allergies." Poor kid really wants a dog, and from Snoopy to Scooby Doo, Marmaduke to every dog that comes to school at pick-up time, his devotion has not waned. A few days ago, while searching On Demand for a Saturday night family movie, I stumbled across the old movie Beethoven. The kids, of course, loved it and I have a feeling it will wind up in our regular rotation.

I'm sure there's a solution in here somewhere (aside from the obvious), but I think it will take some more digging, some more exposure, some more brainstorming to find it. Maybe I could pray to a saint about it. How about St. Francis of Assisi? Isn't he the patron saint of animals? I don't know... maybe St. Bernard would be better.