DEAR VODKA AUNT

DEAR VODKA AUNT,DEAR VODKA AUNT,

I just got a new dog and I’m kinda inexperienced in being a dog mom. All of my friends are really experienced dog moms, and I always feel inadequate compared to them. My friends and I have are going to have a dog play date Halloween party where we’re gonna dress our dogs up in cute costumes and watch movies. I really want to prove that I’m a good dog mom by blowing my friends away with my dog’s costume, but I don’t know what to dress her as! Please help me come up with some ideas.

Help! Dog Mom Disaster

Dear Dog Mom Disaster,

I haven’t been in this situation before, as I don’t own a dog. I do, however, own a peacock, but I’ve never been able to find a costume that would fit her. Plus, she’s a stone cold bitch and would never let me dress her in something as undignified as a Halloween costume. That being said, I still think I have some insight that might be useful to you in this situation.

I want to start off by saying that you need to get some new friends if they get you this worked up over something like a dog Halloween costume. When I was in college, my friends all made me feel insecure about the way I looked, and that helped me to push myself to join a weight-loss pyramid scheme and get on diet pills, which ultimately helped me to get so skinny that I looked like a Halloween skeleton. My college friends pushed me to be better and to look better, but your friends just want you to treat your dog well, which isn’t going to help you on a path toward self-improvement the way that my friends helped me. Do yourself a favor: drop them and find people who will push you to get on diet pills.

But if you’re really stuck on this whole dog Halloween party thing, I do know of a situation that might be applicable. When I was about four years old, my family’s boston terrier, Daisy, had puppies with our neighbor’s wiener dog. They had some strange-looking puppies. I became attached to one of the puppies, and since I was only four years old, I came up with the name “Unk.” My mom couldn’t stomach separating me from my beloved Unk, so she let us keep him. Over the years, I got caught up and lost interest in Unk, leaving my mom to take care of him by herself. I believe that this is where her deep-seated resentment for me started, but that’s another story for my therapist.

For years, my mom ignored the idiotic dog Halloween costume trend and took wonderful care of Unk, feeding him the scraps from our table nightly. He was so well-fed that he was eventually so fat that he couldn’t walk. It wasn’t until my Sophomore year of high school, when my mom left her usual bartender job to become a preschool teaching assistant, that my mom started to catch unwarranted criticism for Unk’s upbringing. The other preschool teachers were a bit like your friends, Dog Mom Disaster. They were obsessed with their dogs and were crazy about “taking good care of them.” One night, one of my mom’s coworkers, Karen, came over for dinner and was apparently “disturbed” by Unk’s appearance. After that, my mom became very insecure about Unk, even though she knew she’d been taking perfect care of him. It got so bad that she even bought him dog food, forcing him to eat that instead of his beloved table scraps.

One day, my mom’s preschool friends asked her to participate in a dog Halloween costume competition. My mom’s worst nightmare was realized. My mom was desperate to fit in with her preschool coworkers, and I’ve never seen her so frantic to try to find the perfect costume. She was up all night scouring magazines and newspapers for ideas, until the day before Halloween, when I came home from school and my she was unusually calm. She was humming as she made dinner, but something felt off. I looked around the house and couldn’t find Unk, so I went to my mom and asked her where he had gone. She told me that the stress of trying to find a Halloween costume got to be too much, and she had taken him to the pound. I took it really hard at the time, but now I understand that my mom did the right thing.

Dogs just aren’t worth the stress of taking care of them.

I’m not telling you to take your dog to the pound, Dog Mom Disaster, but my mom’s life improved tremendously when she did. She also packed up my family and moved us to a different town to avoid the scrutiny from all of the other dog moms at her job. I hope this advice helps, and have a spooky Halloween! Also, make sure to check out my new Halloween-themed jewelry projects; I’m on Etsy now!

Skip town and have a happy Halloween, Vodka Aunt

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