At about 4 years old, all parents should begin to prepare themselves for the upcoming complaints about wanting a pet. If it hasn't started already, it will.

It may start out as a goldfish; how expensive can one fish be? Give it a month and that one fish turns into a full tank, running your water bill and the bill from the pet store into numbers you wouldn't think possible. Ha, one fish.

Next comes the hamster/guinea pig/fluffy small animal. "Sally brought in her hamster Daffodil today, can I get one?" Now, thanks to your prior experience with the goldfish that died a couple months earlier and went unnoticed by you and your child, you now know to budget. Hamster cage, some bedding, food, and the hamster — not too bad. Wait till you get it home. In case you were unaware, hamsters are nocturnal, and at six years old, I discovered that trying to sleep while a little furry ball is running full speed ahead on a creaky metal wheel is not all that easy. So here's to hoping you get a "special" hamster. One that won't bite you, scratch you, or get lost underneath your bed for two hours before finding it across the room chewing on your computer cord, which, yes, is plugged into the outlet.

Two hamsters later, things calm down. Losing that many pets takes a toll on a young child. But kids are known for being resilient, and along with resilience comes a rather short attention span. R.I.P Daffodil.

So a year or so goes by, focusing on school, sports, hopefully avoiding the reptile species altogether. If not, just look up the cost of a heat lamp and how often they shed their skin; hopefully that lends a hand in putting a stop to that potentially hostile situation of a lost snake because someone forgot to shut the cage.

We've worked our way up from small to large. Now comes the dreaded big animal: the dog. Brace yourselves, because ask anyone and they will tell you puppies are a handful. But the difference is they will be the best handful of anything you could ever receive.

Puppies are cute. They have eyes that will melt your heart. That being said, I highly recommend bringing backup if you go to a shelter because otherwise you run the risk of coming home with four puppies, three kittens, and no excuse as to why you came home with all of this when you were supposed to be at the grocery store.

Now I can't deny it, puppies are nothing short of a full-time commitment. They get set on a schedule. If you don't let them out, expect to step on something soft or wet right when you least expect it, or when you come around to smelling it. Trying to find the pile of poop that was causing the whole downstairs of our house to reek became a common game for my family.

And if you don't entertain them, expect to lose many, many, and I mean many socks. Not to mention that important pile of paperwork you left on the nightstand that now lies shredded on the floor, probably next to that sock you lost two weeks ago that now has a large hole in the sole.

This isn't meant to scare you, it's meant to show you that all of those hassles mentioned above, all the trouble and frustration they caused, It will be one of the best things you can do for your child. Getting a puppy was the best decision my parents ever made.

Sure, waking up at four in the morning to walk the dog wasn't ideal, but she had to go. And always having to make plans around the dogs eating schedule was never fun, but she had to eat. I learned to plan my life around another living being. It taught me responsibility the hard way, but it was the most rewarding thing I've ever experienced.

Now if you ask my parents, they may have seen this experience from a slightly different light because 8-year-old me was not the only one waking up at four in the morning to let the dog out, but from what I can tell, they concur. The kisses after coming home from a long day of work, the pure joy that they never seem to run out of, and those great stories about that one time the dog got his/her head stuck in the trash can or you walked in on your dog head first drinking out of the toilet. At the time, you probably weren't too happy, but it all becomes worth it in the end.

A dog is a man's best friend. A cat, I'm not really sure whose best friend they are. They like to do their own thing, but they make good pets too. So buy your child a dog, buy them a puppy, and make them take responsibility for that little living creature that will grow to be their best friend and the one thing they would hate to live without. Thirteen years later, your child will never be so grateful for their little furry friend.