Kids VS Dog or Who Is More Jealous?

I think these pictures were taken in January or February of 2005 which would make Kaylin (granddaughter) almost 2 and Dispatch 1 1/2, isn't Kaylin a doll, she still is and not because she is the child of the one the other kids call my favorite (my favorite is supposedly my oldest stepson whom the other kids say can do no wrong in my eyes, @ that point I tell them I've disliked them all equally @ times). Anyway this is back when we thought Dispatch was a poodle which is another story, thus the horrible haircut. That and my oldest daughter decided to try her hand @ grooming him.

Dispatch (the dog in the picture a bichon and maybe poodle) was pretty good with the grandkids, didn't trust them but there was good reason. They did strange things to him. He did bite another granddaughter but she was teasing him taking food away from him and then giving it back, he learned better. Also Dispatch learned that if I had the camera out he had to be in the picture. He likes our children, loves some but that's another story.
Our children are all horribly jealous of the dog except for the two youngest who are both blond and Christy and Christi respectively, that's what happens when you have a blended family, I can't say Judy is jealous either but she is the youngest of my husbands two oldest daughters, so it's mostly the oldest kids that are jealous? My husband had a 10 year gap in between his two sets of kids so the respective oldest 3 of each family are the worst about not liking the dog. They say we spoil him horribly and they were never spoiled like that. One did admit ONCE that I must have spoiled the kids and they not known it considering how much I spoil the dog. She has @ last count 7 dogs with separate schedules because some of them fight so I don't know about me spoiling MY dog? We got Dispatch when the youngest child we had living with us was barely out of high school. Anyway the kids were basically gone from home and we had this foo foo dog that they were jealous of. We aren't talking babies here, they are in their 20s and 30s and professionals for the most part. But they don't want to h
ear about the dog, they grimace when we have to go home because the dog is there, they pass over the dog pictures, ...........they call him horrors, that stupid mutt?

For an example my oldest daughter who is really a loving caring upstanding person (she's the school nurse, has 4 kids, and a sunbeam group @ church) and I were talking the other day. I told her I had the new video of Dispatch "talking" on youtube and she said she could care less?

We went on a trip to the Florida Keys one Christmas eve when we were in Ft Lauderdale took my youngest daughter and my husbands youngest son and of course Dispatch too, it's referred to sometimes as the trip from hell because they had to ride in the back seat of the pickup with Dispatch who wanted his Mommy and Daddy in the FRONT seat the whole time. We went to the dog beach down there BTW, there and Dairy Queen, only two times we stopped except some state park with an old bridge and lots of shells. And yes the dog got ice cream @ Dairy Queen. BUT I did try to make the dog behave and not be like attached to me the whole trip.

So in short I guess the dog was our answer to the empty nest syndrome (what empty nest, they kept trying to come back!) and the kids didn't like what they viewed as a stupid replacement. And of course when we got married most of them were WAY too old to sleep with us (5-21 years old) but the dog gets to sleep with us, and go everywhere with us, and I carry him when he wants carried, and play when he wants to play (sometimes). I think the worst is if I talk baby talk to him and they say I never talked that nice to them. AND if they had came in from outside and jumped on the furniture with wet feet they would have been severely punished and the dog isn't, and he gets to sit on my lap when I watch tv or "daddies" lap. There are myriad more reasons why they think he is spoiled. Probably one of them is I blog about him and animals and not children but I don't think they want so much of their lives and habits exposed as Dispatches have been?

Anyway the kids are jealous of Dispatch. My husbands cousin has 3 girls the same age as some of our kids. They didn't have a dog inside when the kids were growing up either. The girls left home and voila, the parents get a dog. They have a NEW house in town, nice house and they get a terrier. Their girls tell me the dog eats steak and gets towels warmed up for him but I'm not sure that's all true. They say you have to be careful when you have a new baby when you have a pet already established in the home but no one ever warns about getting a new pet when you have children who are already established in the home?