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.
4) Extreme energy and extreme fatigue. Babies and dogs do a lotta running around, especially after the aforementioned balls, sticks, and chew toys. They both do a lotta playing in public parks. And then they both gotta take long naps. Because if they don’t, then they both start
5) Whimpering and then howling. Dogs usually have a lot more patience in this department, whining quietly for hours if need be before prodding and barking. Babies tend to go from happy to grumpy very, very quickly. But they sure sound similar.
The big difference between babies and dogs? By age three, babies have (finally!) outpaced dogs in communication skills, reasoning skills, and toy skills. Dogs still have them beat in the running department, though.
