IT'S A DAD'S LIFEThe kids know I still love them, it's just that maybe I love the dog more, writes Adam Brophy
I WENT AND got a puppy and became a transvestite cliche. It's not a natural leap of cognition but when you look back on it, it seems perfectly normal. Bear with me.
The kids had been pestering us for months for a pet. Their requests varied from horses and sharks to gerbils and kittens.
We rejected them all citing the size of the house as the major reason, but no desire to care for anything beyond that which we had created ourselves was the unsaid cause. I mentioned this in a column a few weeks ago and got unprecedented response - people who love animals really love animals.
My aunt had recently bred long-haired dachshund pups, sold three and kept one for herself along with the mum. She brought the two dogs over to the house one day and, needless to say, the kids fell head over heels for them.
Afterwards they pestered and pestered and we went to visit the dogs again the following week. My aunt took pity and generously offered me the pup. Next thing, we're driving home with a new addition to the family and two kids hopped up like crackheads on puppy love.
The transition to pet-friendly house has been almost seamless. We have been presented with some surprising gifts under the kitchen table and in the shower tray by our new member but, all in all, the process has been less difficult than I imagined.
She's tiny for a start so our back garden seems like the Croker pitch to her. She is also unbelievably cute. She makes the Puss 'n' Boots character in Shrek seem like Stalin mid-purge. Big, sad, brown eyes, floppy ears, glossy coat.
And she can't bark. She hasn't learned how to yet, and I don't think she will because she is possessed of a temperament sweet as honey.
See how drippy I am? See how prone to being taken advantage of I am bound to become?
She bounces around the back garden chasing butterflies, but even if she caught one she would only let it rest gently on her little moist nose. The testosterone is draining from my body; I feel like plucking a harp and composing love songs.
We live close to Ballybough where crosses between Pitbulls and Rottweilers are order of the day. If your dog can't rip the throat out of a charging rhino, he's nowhere.
And here I come with my little princess in my arms so her paws don't get sore. All that's missing is a wee bow, for me and her, and I think paisley with a twist of pink might suit us both. I can feel the local disdain land like moss on my shoulders, but I wipe it off haughtily because she's my baby and she's just sooo gorgeous. Mwah!
I take her for walks in St Anne's and Fairview Parks, and I bring her up to the school to get the elder. Everywhere we go hordes of women descend on us, cooing and clucking and suddenly I'm the most sensitive man in Ireland.
All the mammies in the playground, who until now were blind to my charms, are batting their lashes and offering shy half-smiles. It doesn't matter, I have eyes for only one girl. The dads shake their heads in disgust and pull the chokers on their Alsatians.
We had to push through a crowd of teenage school kids on the footpath in Fairview. All the girls screamed, "Oh my God! Look at her, she's so cute, what is she mister?" I still can't pronounce "Dachshund" with any confidence so I say she's a type of super-cool mini-sausage dog. One of the lads mutters out of the corner of his mouth, "it's a bleedin' rat."
I stop, take a deep breath, calm myself, look him up and down and declare it is he who is the rat.
I pick Poppy up (for that is what we have called her, very macho) and march off down the road, head held high, kids trailing behind.
I have a craving to rent Best In Show and take it seriously, but figure, for my own sake, I should go out and get a box set of The Sopranos and watch it from start to finish.
This mysterious haughtiness and wiggle when I walk must have a cure somewhere - unprovoked violence on celluloid seems as good a place as any to start.
The kids are looking at me strangely and getting upset because I'm hogging the dog. They know I still love them, it's just that maybe I love the dog more. Like, oh my God!
abrophy@irish-times.ie