It's official, I'm never having kids

Having this dog in my house for the last day and a half has been exciting for all of us, but as the old adage goes, everything is better in moderation. This much constant excitement has been exhausting. And messy. When dogs get excited, they start drooling, so now I have two dogs drooling over me, my clothes, my sheets, each other, and just about everything else. I can't even pet them without getting my fingers sticky.

And you might think giving them some toys to play with would get them to settle down, but it doesn't help that much. Despite having over a dozen toys to choose from, the only one they want to play with is the one the other dog has. As I quickly found out, he's just as possessive as she is, and as such, they argue all the time. Probably to the annoyance of all my neighbors.

Even though they have each other to play with, they're never really in the mood. Not at the same time. There's a nearly constant back-and-forth with each other when one wants to initiate play and the other wants to be left alone. All this means is even more barking at each other.

Turns out they mostly want to play with me, which makes it really hard to do my civic duty of reuniting him with his family since I can't even get through a single webpage without one of them coming to me for attention.

Oh, and they get jealous of each other too. Whenever I start petting or playing with one, the other starts demanding attention by whining to me or literally jumping over the other one to get to the front of the line. Dude, I can't even.

And to add to my misery, he decided that my apartment smells too much like her so he tries to mark his territory whenever he thinks I'm not looking. So now I have to hide my clothes and lock my bedroom door so he doesn't decide to water anything I might wear. Remember the drooling I mentioned earlier? It dehydrates them a lot so they have been soaking up water like two furry sponges. So now I'm constantly vigilant and taking them out for twice as many bathroom breaks as before because I don't want to live in a toilet.

That's the other thing too. Taking them outside is such a hassle because they both want to be the first to go out. As soon as I try to put a leash on one, the other one senses what's going on and decides to get right in my face so that I can take them out first. And if you haven't guessed already, that's just more arguing I have to put up with. It now takes approximately 5 minutes to do something I used to do in 5 seconds.

And you know how in the cartoons when multiple people get jammed up trying to squeeze through a door at the same time? I didn't know something like that could happen until I tried to walk them yesterday. Now it happens every single time.

The operative word in that last paragraph was the word 'tried', because it's really, really difficult to walk two dogs when they both move at different speeds and drift in opposite directions trying to smell what's out there. At this point, I've relented to taking them out to a nearby field where they could just run around and let me have a few moments of peace.

I truly thought that would wear them out enough to get some rest, but as soon as we're back home they want to play again. Grrrrr! I've had to sleep on the floor the last two nights because the only way I can get this lost puppy to sleep is by laying down with him. Otherwise both dogs would be fighting for prime real estate on my bed, and then nobody gets any sleep.

Just yesterday I had to stop a toddler from walking out into a busy parking lot while his mom was picking up some food for them, and it was as his mom scooped him up with one hand with their food in the other that I felt that I could finally relate to a middle-class housewife. We only have two hands, and when they're both full, everything becomes a juggling act.

Don't get me wrong, I love my dog. And I love this new dog too. And they seem to love each other for the most part. I still kinda wish I could keep him. But man is this kinda life demanding. I had to leave work an hour early yesterday because I was afraid I'd come home to the suburban equivalent of a warzone, but thankfully not much has happened. My dog had some drops of blood on her lips and the remnants of a chewed up shoebox were strewn all over my living room floor, but that's way better than I expected.

I haven't had any luck so far finding his owners, but if they never turn up, I think I'll try to keep him. He's young and energetic, but with some training I can get him to mellow out. He's already made a lot of progress in a little bit of time. My dog was the same way when I first brought her home too. It's probably just all nerves from such a new experience. Regardless, it's been testing all of our patiences? What's the plural of patience? Idk. It's a crazy life.