Ah, how I do love to ponder those timeless questions. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Where did I leave my car keys? Who ate the last of the Honey Nut Cheerios and didn’t tell anyone?

But, I am not here to give answers to those questions (which happen to be, by the way, the egg, no, on the washing machine, and Omar), I am here to pose and then answer a much more important question; are puppies and shall they always be more awesome than babies?

The short answer is, “You can bet your pants that they are!” But this response would not hold up in certain scientific circles that keep rejecting me for a certain Nobel Prize, so allow me to elaborate. I will apply my version of the scientific method to prove, once and for all and beyond a shadow of a doubt, that puppies are superior to babies.

Hypothesis – Puppies Are and Always Shall Be More Awesome than Babies

The first step in any attempt of scientific proof is to divorce emotion from the process. Andddd… done. Having reevaluated my hypothesis with cyborg-like clarity, I have reduced my theory to its most basic mathematical form, as illustrated in the infographic below.

Now, for the fun part. Unemotional, scientific fun, that is. Let’s get to the proof! And, as my source of said proof, I shall rely upon my own personal experience and the vast resource that is the internet. All of this information will be fed into an unbiased supercomputer for analysis. I give you the Puppitron 2000. Don’t let the name fool you!

With that, let’s get to it!

It is very easy to take a puppy on a car ride

Just from this entry alone, it is easy to see that puppies are superior to babies. I did a search on the internet for things that you need to take a baby in a car. The list is staggering! And expensive! Now, maybe babies are more fragile than when I was a kid, but my parents used to just chuck me and my siblings in the back seat and let nature take its course. And seat belts? What were we? Expensive crash test dummies?

Just look at this list of recommended items (assuming that you already have a car):

1. Car seat

2. Baby wipes and clean up towels (babies are messy, but we will cover that later)

3. The diaper bag with diaper related items

4. Pacifier and extra pacifiers (apparently, those little devils will lose them in between seats and on the floor)

5. Toys to keep them distracted

6. A variety of snacks

7. Baby beverages

Now, there are more things that you can bring if you really want to pamper your tiny human, like DVD players and whatnot, but these are apparently the basics. Let’s check out the list of things you need to bring with you when taking a trip with a puppy:

1. Leash

2. Poop bags

3. (Optional) A bucket for smiles

It is that easy! Almost nothing beats the unadulterated joy of a young pup on a road trip! And they practically entertain themselves! You can almost see their thought process happening, if you watch closely. Little puppy starts getting restless. Little puppy looks out car window. Little puppy sees something. Little puppy gets excited to see something. Little puppy gets tired from excitement. Little puppy takes nap. Little puppy wakes up from nap. And.. repeat said process. So, let’s see how the Puppitron has rated this data… Staying in the realm of practicality and mobility, I move on to another important comparison. You can carry a puppy like a baby Oh sweet, little loaf of puppy, how we love thee. I believe that comes from Shakespeare, but don’t quote me on it. Anyway, here is the scenario. You are out for a walk with your puppy. Your puppy gets tired and can simply walk no further on those adorable little puppy legs, so puppy lays down to sleep. What do you do? Why, you bend right down and scoop that little feller up and carry him like a baby, that’s what you do! And why wouldn’t you! It is so easy to carry a puppy like a baby! In fact, you may be tempted to do so even if puppy is not tired. In that situation, my advice is simple. You go right ahead and do it. Because puppy. Now, let’s think about the inverse of this statement. You are out for a walk with a baby. It should probably be your baby, just for this argument. Little baby gets tired and can walk no further on those fleshy little baby stumps, so baby lays down to sleep. What do you do? You bend down and pick up baby by the scruff of the neck like a puppy. NO! You do not do this! Ever! Apparently, this is not considered proper baby handling and could even land you in jail in some locales. So, you can carry a puppy like a baby, but you cannot carry a baby like a puppy. With that, let’s check back with the Puppitron. It seems that puppies have taken an early lead. Let us make one final hypothetical exploration of the world of travel. This time, we shall go by air. Babies on planes Unless you are Bill Gates or the President of the United States, when you travel by plane, you probably don’t know who else is going to be on the plane with you until you get to the gate. Now, the first time I ever flew on a plane, I didn’t even think about babies. Now I do. When I get to the gate, the first thing I do is a little something that I like to call “The Baby Scan.” If I do spot a baby, I shift to a little something I like to call “The Baby Prayer.” It goes like this: “Dear Lord, please do not let that baby be sitting near me.” I repeat this until I get on the plane and see where the baby is sitting. If my luck is good, the baby is not near me. If my luck is bad, I ask the flight attendant if I can sit someplace quieter like on the wing or perhaps in cargo. Which brings me to my point. I have never once seen a puppy at the gate, and I can tell you that I have looked. Why, I would fly exclusively on an airline that had a puppy friendly policy. I wouldn’t even care where we went. In fact, an airline that was not only puppy friendly but also staffed by puppies is like some cruel dream that will never come true. ”This is your pilot, Captain Puppy. Welcome aboard and I have no idea what I’m doing.” Yes, planes flown by puppies is not a possibility, I realize, but I digress. There is a reason that you will never see a puppy on a plane. Because they get shipped in cargo. And, sometimes, they get drugged to relieve the stress of said trip. Now, am I suggesting that babies get drugged and shipped in cargo to their final destination? Maybe. No. No. Of course not. Okay, maybe, but that is besides the point. The bigger point is that puppies have never and will never make air travel uncomfortable. Let’s see to whom the Puppitron awards this point. Puppies are smarter than babies For proof of this, we need look no further than plastic. That’s right, I said plastic. Think of how many wonderful things (and some not so wonderful) are made of the stuff. It really is amazing. But, it seems like the stuff is like baby Kryptonite! I don’t know what it is about this miracle of science that makes it such a danger to babies, but it is apparently a huge threat. It is almost as if it causes some self-destructive reaction in children. Perhaps babies have evolved and lost some inherent upper body strength since I was little, but I know that I never lost a battle with Mr. Evil Plastic Bag. Now, no matter the species, plastic bags and buckets are not play things. But, puppies are like little plastic shredding machines. Bring home some groceries or pet food in a plastic bag and make certain that you leave it out of the reach of puppy – he will tear right though it to find what ever mystery product lies inside. If anything, we should be putting disclaimers on puppies to warn plastic of their inherent dangers. Checking back with the Puppitron, let’s see where we stand. Puppies are cuter than babies: Photos and Stories Let us venture for a moment into the mystical, hypothetical realm once again. In this magical world, you have a roommate that we shall call Steve. You are quite close with Steve. Some might say too close, but that is another matter. Now, you go into work on Monday morning and someone asks you how your weekend was. You proceed to start telling them about all of the time you spent with Steve. How you made spaghetti for Steve and he proceeded to throw most of it around the kitchen and get it on himself before eating a small portion of it. Then Steve needed a bath but Steve didn’t want a bath so that was another mess. Then Steve was tired, but, after an hour of sleep, Steve woke up because he made a mess in his pants. You had to change his pants and it was the cutest little poopie that he made. Best of all, Steve peed on you while you were cleaning him up! And guess what? You documented all of this with your handy camera phone, some of it even in video format! I hope that you see where I am going with this. Your coworkers would likely think you insane for spending your time this way, much less documenting it and then sharing it. Does it make it any different to replace Steve in this scenario with someone’s offspring? I say to you no and this insanity must end! Now, some may argue that this logic does not hold since babies are cute. I have a simple reply for this. They are not. All babies look like Winston Churchill. Even his mother said that he looked like Winston Churchill when he was a baby. See?

And puppies? Guess what? For the most part, they all look the same, too. But guess what else? They are cute. Every single last one of them.

Even if you want to argue the cuteness factor of babies, you have to admit that they can be a little creepy, something puppies are incapable of. There is something about them that can strike at some primal fear in us. Do you disagree? If so, I ask you then why the movie was “Rosemary’s Baby” and not “Rosemary’s Puppy?”

You see? It just doesn’t work like that.

So, where does that leave us, o mighty Puppitron?

Babies smell bad. Really bad.

This one is a no-brainer, or at least there were times that I wished that I didn’t have a brain when I was forced to smell a baby. And there is not just one particular odor associated with them, either. There is the sour milk smell, the sticky syrupy smell, the dirty feet smell. And then there is the worst nasal offender of all. Yes, I am talking about the dirty diaper.

Most of us have a story or memory that involves a situation that was abruptly halted by the sudden intrusion of an odor most foul. It usually doesn’t take much investigation to realize that the culprit is the byproduct of the baby in the room. And think about it. Is there any other creature on the planet for whom it is acceptable to sit around with a plastic sack of their own feces firmly attached to them?

But, in the history of time, I can tell that none has ever answered the question of “what is that horrible smell” with the reply of “puppy.” In fact, little puppy turds are cute. I won’t show actual baby and puppy poop. Instead, I have comparable photos as evidence.

But, even if little puppy poopies did smell, we’d hardly have a chance to be offended by them. It is an instinctual behavior of mother dogs to eat their pups doodies until they start eating solid food. This originally stemmed from a need to protect her offspring from predators, but is now done in an attempt to show humans how to keep their little ones from stinking. I mean, if a dirty baby smells bad to us, think of how bad it must be for the powerful nose of a dog!

And, it looks like the Puppitron has given extra points on this one!

Conclusion

There you have it! Using my version of the scientific method and feeding all of the data through the Puppitron 2000, we can clearly see that my original hypothesis that puppies are and always shall be more awesome than babies has been proven correct. And I didn’t even have to get into some of the other facts, like puppies are quietter than babies or that it is a bad sign if a baby is chasing you and biting your feet.

Maybe next time we should see who wins the puppy versus kitten battle…