Pets and children...

Ryan and Gumball!

The idea for this post is the result of my son’s craziness this morning with our pooch, the mighty Gumball who is a 9 pound white Maltese that just wants to sit and chew his bone. However, Ryan just doesn’t want to let that happen. Instead, he wants to play “Jurassic Park” and act like the mighty T-Rex, running after Gumball to see if he can catch and eat him. Most of the time, our dog is able to scamper away and escape to safety under the kitchen table. Other times, Ryan is able to catch him and they tussle playfully on the living room floor for a bit with Gumball finding himself lifted three feet in the air waiting for the ordeal to end. Ryan will let him go after few moments and typically, the process will start all over again.

As a parent, I let this circle of death, I mean fun, happen for a little while until I can tell that Gumball is completely fed up and ready to bite Ryan’s arm off. So, I intervene asking Ryan to stop because Gumball’s going to bite him. Ryan says no, he’s fine, they can keep playing. I up my game and instead of asking, tell Ryan to stop. He again says no, he’s fine, and that they can keep playing. Finally, I tell Ryan to stop and before I can get the word out, Gumball yelps in pain since Ryan squished his neck, he tries to retaliate against Ryan with a chomp, misses, but gets a decent scratch in. Ryan says Gumball is mean, I tell Ryan he should have stopped, he says whatever, and then tries to go back to playing. I mean, God forbid he learns anything from what just happened, mind you it happens almost every day. At that point, I put an end to the “fun” and Ryan stomps off to his bedroom mad that he can’t continue making the dog's life hell, wait I mean, playing with the dog. :)

What’s the point of this rant you ask? Well for one, I wanted to get all of the above off my chest since I needed to vent about the crazy. With that being said, I guess my point is as parents, it’s our responsibility to keep our children in check and make sure they don’t treat a pet like a toy, just something they play with. A pet is a living, breathing thing and it’s my job to teach Ryan that fact. I think I’ve been doing a decent job of this so far, hopefully, Ryan will start catching on sooner rather than later for Gumball’s sake.