Fur-children get demoted

Our dogs ate elk pot roast and sliced deli meat on Monday morning.

No, it wasn’t a special occasion. We just forgot to buy dog food.

To add insult to injury, we decided to stop buying the $79-a-bag kibble that they’ve enjoyed for years. It’s generic time, pups.

This is just the latest in a yearlong string of decisions, conscious or not, that have demoted Mojo and Java from fur-children to dogs. (See their puppy pictures here... of course I saved them. I have dozens.)

For years after we brought Java home from the Teton Valley shelter in 1998 and picked Mojo out of a squirming mass of unwanted puppies in 2002, they got top billing in conversation, picture frames, hiking decisions and on furniture.

Java was ring bearer at our wedding. I baked homemade peanut-butter biscuits for them. I organized a 1st birthday party for Mojo and as many of his brothers, sisters and cousins we could round up. For short-haired Mojo’s first winter, we got him a fleece coat, although I’m sure other dogs made fun of him. Regularly, Java and Mojo got to go shopping at Valley Feed or PetCo, picking out their own treats.

They rode in the car almost every trip and came with us on vacations. Anxious by nature, Mojo single-mouthedly ruined a half-dozen seat belts and applied nose prints to every window. Java probably made us prematurely deaf by barking at other dogs.

We passed up great housing opportunities that didn’t allow dogs. How could we get rid of family members? What kind of people do that? Monsters, we decided.

Part of the reason we didn’t have kids earlier was that I couldn’t imagine loving a child as much as as I love Mojo. He was the center of my world. Nightly, he’d dive under the comforter and curl up at my abdomen, emerging only when the lack of oxygen activated his self-preservation instinct.

When my pregnancy-induced snoring exiled Scott to the couch, he and I would argue over who got to sleep with Mojo. I imagined that within a year or two, our baby would also fight for the right to snuggle.

Before we brought Desi home from the hospital, we did what experts advised – gave the dogs a hospital onesie for them to smell. Who knows if it mattered. Java didn’t pay much attention to her. “Did it bring food?” she sniffed. “Is it food?”

But Mojo seemed distressed that we were lavishing attention on the new “puppy.” He was no longer the baby in the house. He got it, and he didn’t like it.

In a fit of jealous rage, Mojo stole Desi’s pacifier toy and chewed the end off the nipple. Despite a few token face-licks – designed to ensure extra petting? – he ignored her, at best, and growled a warning in his crankier moments.

In a year, it hasn’t gotten that much better. At best, he runs from her sticky-fingered advances. At worst, he steals her teething biscuits if they land on the floor and has taken pieces of hot dog from her hand, less than gently.

With both adult humans working full time, we barely get enough time with baby. “Pet Mojo,” my husband has to remind me as I rush in the door making goo-goo eyes at Desi. I give him a 15-second snuggle and head for the baby. “Don’t forget Java,” he says. Poor Java gets the five-second version, but she might be too old to care.

There’s just not enough love to go around.

The dogs hardly ever get to ride in the car any more.

They go for a week or more without Milk Bones.

The pictures in frames on my desk all show Desi. One of my newer coworkers actually said, “You have a dog?” the other day.

Some people go as far as to surrender their pets after having children, said Corie Rybak, manager of the Teton County/Jackson Animal Shelter.

“People with a new baby just become overwhelmed,” she said. “There’s so much to do. Dogs kind of fall down the list.”

Notoriously independent, cats are more often surrendered because of children’s allergies, she said, but dogs have a hard time adjusting to less attention from their people. Like a jealous sibling, they act out. They bark, whine, shred things.

“They’re basically bored,” Rybak said. “No one’s paying them any attention.”

Depending on the dog’s breed and temperament, it can wind up getting even more love once the child grows up enough to play with it. That is, if it can withstand the year or so of neglect without developing bad habits.

My 2010 resolution was to get outside and play more, and I plan to take the dogs along. I will try to give them more attention than just the odd snuggle when guilt overtakes me.

And I hope Desi can help by quickly learning to give gentle pets instead of toddler smacks.

Now that she’s learned to drop food to them from her high chair, Desi is a little bit more popular with her fur-siblings. I’m hoping that trend continues.