Pets

A thread running through a yahoo group I'm on is asking us to talk about our pets. I thought you guys might also want to know what other craziness exists in our home, besides the adorable Littluns.

We are, in fact, downsizing in the pet department. My rule is that all kids get to stay, but pets have to tow the line if they want to stay. I run a pretty tight ship - in the pet department anyway. Sometimes I don't even give three strikes before they're out.

First, you will all be glad to know that we got rid of Ashley Bonnie, the dog who tried to eat my daughter's face last winter.





We loved that dog but you have to draw the line somewhere. (That is a story for another post. I learned a lot of valuable information about dog bites. After the fact, of course. And she didn't really try to eat her face, she actually bit her on the lip, but it's all the same to me!) Too bad. Other than that incident, she was the best dog we ever had.

OK, so we replaced that dog with another, but the new dog weighs about 60 pounds less so, the way I see it, we're still ahead. More on that later...

Our cocker spaniel, Cocoa Evangeline, turned out not to be lake material. She kept getting burrs the size of quarters in her long fur, and she loved to find dead fish and roll in them. Why are dogs so weird?




When the burrs were so bad that her ear was folded in half and stuck together, I started looking for other options. My mother-in-law adopted Cocoa earlier this summer, and she loves being part of their family. Plus, we still get to visit. She also was a weird dog - she had an obsession with our fish tank, and would sit for hours and watch the fish swim. Apparently she now obsesses over their guinea pig, so she's happy.

We gave away our adorable lop-eared bunny a couple of years ago to a sweet friend, before he got really huge. (The bunny, not the friend. The friend is a girl. And not huge).

Of course, we immediately replaced the Little Bunny Boo-Boo with 2 kittens (who turned into cats, it's true, but honeslty you hardly ever see them so, if you count by Hours They Are In The Way, they barely count at all).

Finally, our lion fish has some barbaric tendencies and keeps killing the other fish with his poisonous barbs. I think he's killed about 12. As of yesterday he is now King of the Hill. We really thought we were safe as long as we got fish who were too big for his mouth. Turns out he kills just for fun. Sicko. He even killed the shrimp & tried to eat it. He couldn't get the shrimp to fit so its claws are hanging out of his mouth. He eventually spit it out because, duh, it has an exoskeleton! Fish are so dumb.

So...that leaves us with 2 dogs (Beau Antonio, a 140 pound lab and Diego Alejandro Frisco Pasado Laredo, a 4 pound chihuahua, guess who's in charge?), 2 cats (Mary Kate and Jackie, but you'll probably never see them if you come over) and 1, read it again, 1 fish (Aslan, who the kids have decided is actually a Devil fish and needs a new name. Aslan seemed to fit because he's a lion fish but that was before we knew him).

Imho, you can't really count all the critters that my kids are forever coming home with, or the snake I killed in the garage last week (btw an axe works way better than a shovel - why do they always tell you to get a shovel?) because they aren't pets. They're more like experiments.

I keep trying to get dh to let me buy one of my dear friend's shih tzu pups, but he says we have to charge admission if we get anymore pets. Ooh, but now that the fish are depleted maybe he'd reconsider...

I really need help.

Update: We just received word that Cocoa died today. Apparently she started getting sick and just died. She was nearly 10, not terribly old for a small dog. We will miss this sweet little dog! For all her quirks (she had plenty) she really was a sweet girl...