Pit bulls and Parolees

Our family dog is a pit bull.  He's great.  I wish more people would consider them.  If you are in the market for a dopey golden retriever, shop around the pit bulls in your local shelter.  You will surely find one that meets your needs.  We are dog people.  My husband and I grew up with many family dogs and when we started our own family we kept the family dog tradition going.  Between the two of us, and together we've had... labs, great danes, shepherd mixes, rotti mixes, springer spaniel, akitas, and now... a pit bull.  His name is Petey and we got him at 5 months old from a family that couldn't keep him anymore because of landlord issues.  I wasn't in the market for a pit bull but our Akita, Kobi, was closing in on 12 and being a somewhat of a snob, had never been a kids' dog.  So, I was in the market for a puppy for my children.  I really didn't have any strong feelings on pit bulls either way.  We were dog people and a dog is a dog is a dog is a dog.  So we have Petey the pit bull, our family dog.

Once you have and are fond of a pit bull, a strange thing happens.  You become aware and at the very least find yourself on the fringe of pit bull advocacy.  You join pit bull FB groups, and acronyms like BSL (breed specific legislation) roll easily off your tounge. You love stories about Hollywood stars adopting pit bulls because it makes you feel very urbane.  Then the bumper stickers come out... "Pit bulls are a girl's best friend", "pit bull  mom", "I love my pit bull", etc.  It's a fast downward slope to crazy dog person land which is just as weird as crazy cat lady land without all the gross litter boxes.

Recently, I read an article (posted on my local pit bull awareness FB page of course) about "dog management".  It was a good article and made a lot of sense.  Basically, the author was tired of hearing "it's all about how they are raised" when it comes to pit bulls.  The author found this concerning because even the best of families with the best of intentions can end up with any kind of dog with problems.  He wants people to work more on good "dog management".  Know your dog's personality, behavior, and issues and manage it well.  It's as simple as don't let your dog run around loose in an unfenced backyard, or don't take your dog-aggressive fido to the dog park.  Simple, easy, straight forward - good dog management. 

So, this morning I was washing dishes after another exhausting morning with Warren.  We are in February and this kid still doesn't get that M-F he goes to school and the mornings are dedicated to getting there.  I send him up to brush his teeth, 10 min later go to check on him, and he's just starting to put toothpaste on the brush.  What has he been doing? Enjoying the bathroom acoustics by singing to himself.  It already took him 25 minutes to put on the same shirt and pants (catholic school uniform) that he wears every day, and then 30 minutes to eat cereal. It's frustrating. As I washed the dishes I pondered my second born and at the same time pondered my dog's garbage eating addiction and realized it all comes down to management.

I need better "child management" with Warren.  Because as dog people like to say, "I'm setting him up for failure".  I need to make lunches at night because my mornings have to be dedicated to managing Warren so that things don't get frustrating.  I have to know his personality, behavior, and issues and manage it well.  James didn't need much management at all, but that was him.  This is a different kid and I can't expect him to fit into my lax parenting style.  I have to up the management on this one. 

This is often true with parents out and about.  When you see a mother with a wild-child, who is obviously trying to manage the monkey show in her shopping cart, you can give an understanding smile and look the other way.  But that mom that's picking out eye-shadow while her kiddos are rearranging the shampoo shelves? Please manage those kids! How the hell do you even have time to apply eye-shadow?  You are the equivalent of the idiot who lives behind me who lets her pit bull out to pee loose in the back yard and closes the door.  One day, when the other idiot with the loose Chihuahuas, is missing one of the five that poop in my yard, I may not be too upset but you will be in hot water and my placid pit bull suddenly looks all the meaner to the general population.

My brother and sister had poor child and dog management respectively one Christmas and I'm still a little mad about it.  At the annual awesome Christmas Eve party at my sister's house, my brother's daughter laid on the floor in front of my sister's nasty cocker spaniel and teased the dog.  I probably heard people tell her five times that night not to bother dog because he doesn't like anyone.  Then, as she laid next to the dog a few feet from me, I myself told her to get away from the dog before she ultimately got nipped in the face.  All this while my brother was in another room away from a child that generally needs a lot of management.  And my sister should have had the dog in his crate.  The nip wasn't terrible, my brother over-reacted, my sister in turn reacted with a dose of indifference that one would have in this type of "I'm sorry your kid got hurt, but why weren't you watching her and why did six people have to tell her to leave the dog alone" type of thing.  So, my brother, in true soap opera form, vowed never to return to my sister's house.  My sister was insulted that after all the work she does every year for everyone, that she would be treated this way, and canceled forth-coming parties.  My kids were sad, because everyone loved Aunt C's fabulous Christmas parties.  All this could have been avoided with a good dose of child and dog management.  And no one is saying you have to be on point 24/7, but then when stuff does happen, be humble.  Also, please note, my brother and sister are good parents trying to raise their respective criminals "right", but this all came down to management.

I have to manage Warren in public, I have been doing this since the beginning of time (5-6 years).  He is "lively" (see my "The Lively Child" post) and it is my responsibility to know that and work with it the best I can.  But in the confines of my own home, I have been lax and it's my own sanity that suffers.  I will often find myself crying to my husband that, "I'm not the mom I want to be." because I spend so much time being angry and frustrated instead of happy and fun.  Where are the sunshine and butterflies?... The craft time and snuggly story times?...The loving kisses and "Have and nice day at school, Angel of my life"? All down the toilette with the back-talking, temper tantrums, procrastinating, whining, and general six-year-old ego-centric selfishness.

So, my new tactic, and maybe this will help others or maybe you all know this already, is going to be better "child management".  I have to try to pre-empt bad situations. I have a huge procrastinator so I have to get my own shit done beforehand so that I can dedicate mornings to teaching him how to stay on task and relieve frustration and stress for both of us. Then I can get him to school in a peaceful manner with kisses full of sunshine and butterflies. The less stressed we both are the more able we will be to enjoy each other. With children, like dogs, it's not always how they are raised but often how they are managed.

Intellect and Eve

This past friday I had a regular OB visit.  I mean that it was regularly scheduled, the visit itself was extraordinary for me.  I have had one vaginal birth and 2 subsequent c-sections.  One of my sections is considered a "special scar" because of the shape of the cut.  I pretty much resigned myself to repeat c-sections.  This, I was pretty much ok with,  I had three healthy children and tried to consentrate on that.  Then my docter said to me, "What about a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean)?"  "I didn't think I was allowed"  I said back.  She talked about my risks of rupture still being small, that I could labor and if stuff didn't go well we'd just do the section, that we could schedule a section and give me time to go into labor on my own and if I didn't we'd just section.  This was so cool!  I was being given a chance to do something that I had been told wasn't an option... this was so me! So exciting! So everything I live for! So, what did I do? I cried.

I cried, right there on the table.  The docter looked patient, the medical student look alarmed.  I felt... relieved. It was right there and then that I realized how much my birth experiences meant to me. I said to the docter, "I don't feel disabled anymore.  It's like I've been using a wheel-chair and you just told me that I really could walk if I wanted to."

Being human is a very hard thing. You are an animal with either God-given or evolved (or both) intellect. I can feel how important birth is to me, like an animal instinct or an innate urge I can't get rid of - not the amount of births or an urge to keep having births, but the act of giving birth.  But I'm intelligent (how much is debateable) and my intelligence plays ping-pong with my instincts usuing paddles called logic and social norms. After the appointment I called my husband at work and sobbed into the phone, I could feel his alarm and first, and then his deep understanding.  We don't always get each other, but this, he mercifully gets and appreciates.  Second, I called an old highschool friend in Ohio.  When I was pregnant with James she wanted to be a mid-wife and now is one of those annoying, amazing people doing exactly what she said she'd love to do and more.  She get's it too, and has been my phone and FB counselor.

This weekend I did research on VBAC's and baby positioning and natural birthing... all kinds of crazy shit that I had always been jealous of.  In fact a friend of mine had a water birth and hired a professional photog to snap away the memories.  She showed me the beutiful scenes of herself laboring over the side of a tub, her husband rubbing her back.  I looked at the really tear-jerking black and white of her clutching her freshly birthed baby boy to her breast.  I loved it and hated it all at the same time.  It's a weird feeling, really.  I thought of my own photo's of my c-sections... my head in a blue cap with some random nurse holding the baby to my face.  The photos that my husband took when his curiosty and sense of humor got the best of him and he snapped away at my cut open abdomen and uterus while the docter gave him an up close and personal anatomy lesson... my baby on the warmer and me on my side of the curtain hanging with my new best friend, the anesthesiologist, thinking, "Is this really happening right now?" 

I also read about how healing and empowering birth after a c-section can be.  Just reading the words "healing" and "empowering" made tears come out of my eyes.  "What the hell is going on?" I thought.  Then I went and had a tearfull talk with my husband.  I told him that I hold some blame for a family member for my bad birth experience with my second.   That baby was breech and I was scheduled for a version (turning the baby).  But he was born pre-term and low birth weight... both a sympton of mental stress on the mother.  This family member was relentless during the last months of that pregnancy putting pressure on me about everything she didn't like...  a big one was the location of the nursery and if there was lead paint in the room.  She laid guilt trips on my husband and even called my parents about it.  Another family member got so so worked about it that she screamed at me at family function.  I cried and we left early.  It was a miserable pregnancy and c-section, and I blame this person.  And it snowsballs in my brain... if she hadn't gone out of her way to stress me out, I wouldn't have had pre-term labor, and I could have prevented a c-section.  Then little David wouldn't have been a c-section and he wouldn't have been in the NICU for a week and I wouldn't be overly-angry at every small idiotic thing that this person does.  I don't know how much she really is to blame, but I do know that James and David where full term, normal sized babies... and those pregnancies weren't made miserable by her.

So, I realize that I have issues - anger, sadness, blame, jealously - and I want to feel healed and empowered like those VBAC woman.  So, now I'm researching doulas and working on making my perineum (the nice word for taint) strong.  I'm going to indulge my animal urge to birth this kid like a cave woman.  I want to be like our first human mother Eve, birthing her sons outside the Garden of Eden, probablly squatting against a tree.  I want to feel her pain, and her joy, and when it's all over I'll request an apple and take a satisfying bite.

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