Dogs and babies….Babies and dogs….It really isn’t a bad combination; you just have to know when to mix.

I had my dogs first, which helps to explain the working title of my book, ‘My Big Sisters are Labradors’.

And getting a puppy or dogs for your kids is a great idea.

What you don’t want to do is have babies and puppies in the same house at the same time.

Puppies and babies are in the exact same phase of life, the phase of constant attention. You can’t give all your attention to more than one thing at a time. This the basic premise of all sibling rivalry: I had all the attention and now I don’t.

Babies eat, sleep, and poop. The in between time is usually filled with being adorable. Being that cute is truly a fulltime job. Same for puppies: eat, sleep, poop and be adorable. What the adults fail to realize is that the eat, sleep, poop, and play cycle is a 24 hour cycle: day after day after day.

Now I will admit the 24 hour part of parenthood fades at about the 3 or 4^th month with a puppy and can run into the 3^rd YEAR with a baby. (that would be my second child who only had the eat, sleep, scream cycle – he decided against being adorable)

So please, don’t burn your candle at both ends. Leave that for the parents of twins, who have no other choice. Have the babies and buy them a dog only after they grow into kids. Or get yourself a puppy; get some mom and dad practice in before you jump into the deep end of parenting.