baby, or dog?
To those of you who’ve never lived with a dog, the obvious similarities between dogs and babies may not be, um, obvious. For what it’s worth, here’s our list.
1) Drool. Delphine is not an especially drooly tot, but place a typical excited Labrador next to a typical excited baby, and watch the elongated drippy results, usually over:
2) Balls, sticks, and chew toys. Well, humans generally refer to chew toys for babies by such euphemisms as “teething rings,” but it’s the same thing. Both babies and dogs go gaga for anything round, squishy, poke-able, and chompable; both are, of course, orally fixated, chewing away not just on food but on anything new. (Older toddlers often have little gizmos that hide snacks inside; many dogs love these toys, too.) It’s good to have many toys on hand, because neither dogs nor babies are good at maintaining
3) Attention spans. OK, so babies eventually trump dogs in developing a concept of object permanence, aka Being Able to Remember the Existence of a Toy Dropped Out of Sight. But canines and children both will quickly lose interest in a toy and need new ones to distract them. And lost toys are an everyday occurrence for both.
