puppy or a baby ? Meet our pets

Before Christmas Oliver kept asking for a pet, he was desperate to have one... "can we get a rabbit?" No... "can we just go into the pet shop quickly, just to look at them?" ....Ok. "can we have a rabbit..... pleaseeeeeee?" No. "But why?" "Because, Daddy. Daddy, he said NO! Not me, darling, Daddy." ...."oh." *man in shop jokingly said "try to convince him or get a new husband" ....wow, big life decision just for a rabbit.

So after a few weeks of asking for a rabbit or hamster. Oliver said to me, "I've decided I'm going to ask Santa for an African land snail actually...*pause for a while*...  erm I think Daddy will agree to that one". [he did not agree to that one either]

I reminded Oliver, actually we do already have 'pets', they may not be walkable, cuddly or playful but they're pets none the less. Fish. Yes Fish. [Not talking about just his very cool toy robofish that a school friend very kindly bought him for his birthday last year, I'm talking about real fish. Marine fish too!]

About a year ago, while Michael and myself were walking around a fish shop in Essex, [we don't live there but we have noticed that Essex has the best fish shops] admiring the beautiful marine fish I popped up and jokingly said "can we have a marine tank", having always been told no I just assumed he would say no. He's always been very into fish and we had some tanks already with tropical fish in. But this time he said we could look into how much it would cost to change our current one into a marine tank - cutting a long story short we ended up getting a brand new tank custom made which was even bigger at 5ft x 2ft x 2ft and 500litres plus 100 litres sump. [if you don't know what a sump is, that's the tank he has underneath his big 'display tank' that has all the, what I like to call 'bits and bobs' meaning you don't have to have them on show - it wouldn't be anywhere near as pretty if you had to see all of the equipment he has under there].

Having a reef aquarium is more complicated than you may think, it's not just the fish that's in there... There's lots of corals too, snails, crabs and a conche. Michael says that keeping the fish is the easy bit, the corals are the things that will a) costs a lot of money b) need a lot of attention.

What really upsets us is when we are in a fish shop and there's a person buying for example a nemo fish when they don't have the bits it needs. You wouldn't buy a big dog and use a tiny pet bed for it. 

We have both already said we are a bit worried about when the film, dory is released because a lot of people already purchase regal tangs {dory's} which get 2ft long, they're very fast swimmers and we wouldn't want to keep one unless we had a 6ft-7ft tank because well otherwise it just seems a little cruel doesn't it? You wouldn't like to live in a cupboard under the stairs. They're also very delicate fish, why would you want to buy something you're unable to look after properly and it will just die? Think about it, these beautiful fish and lovely corals are from the ocean, they're so special so they need to be looked after properly.

Oliver has obviously named our clown fish, Nemo fish. I am guilty of calling them nemo fish too. Even when we're out. We also have a yellow tang which has always been one of my favourite fishes since someone I knew when I was younger had one and I thought it was beautiful. We also have a colourful collection of Wrasse's, a conche, snails, hermit crabs, mandarin and lots of lovely corals all of which have different names - I don't remember them all but Michael does!


So that's our 'pets'... do you have any pets?

If you have had a puppy and also a child can you answer a question for me please in the comments below, on twitter or facebook? which is harder - having a newborn baby or having a puppy?..... When Isabelle was born, my brother and his wife got a new puppy. On a very tired visit, having been up with a crying baby for days, not having had much rest and a terrible labour, my brother whom had just got a new puppy around the same time, looked worn out. He turned to me and said something along the lines of 'you have no idea how hard this is, I am so tired'. Hahaha - he doesn't have children yet so he cannot tell me which is harder so come on, please as I've never had a puppy... let me know!

Mary-Kate x