Dog

 When you have an abode full of children and adults who needs an animal to create more work. That was not the case for our house. We always had pets running around and lodging on every floor and every bedroom. Most of the time they were trained to go outside but not always. The worse part of this scenario was all of our floors were wood, if a dog or cat was not quick enough to get down three flights of steps you were walking in your bare feet to go to the bathroom and you would step into a puddle. Nan's favorite of all dog breeds was a beagle. They are not too big and they don't shed too much. All of our beagles were named LULU. All of their babies were named LULU. 

We are all animal lovers from birth, so a stray pet would often go unnoticed for days because we used to hide them in our room. It is difficult to keep a beagle quiet because of their howling. Once my sister brought home an 80 pound Collie. We named him Moses. My sister was six and Moses could run faster than her and she would end up crying on the sidewalk because he would follow the older siblings running faster. The problem with Moses was he could smell fear. He never had a leash and he would come when his name was called. One day we were all playing tag and a few of us had neighbors joined our team. One ten year old girl never told us she was afraid of dogs. It was her turn to be the leader and we all took off at lightening speed. She started to run and Moses followed her. He kept biting her shoes and socks because he wanted her to pay attention to him. She ran home and Moses followed her for 3 blocks. Moses came right back for dinner.

On occasion people would ask us to watch their animals while they went on vacation. One Easter a neighbor gave us 12 baby chicks to watch for 1 week. They are harmless but very interesting to our cats. One of my sisters brought the chicks up to our bedroom and shut the door. Within 10 minutes all the chicks were dead. She was 4 and she thought she could pick them up by the neck. Nan went out and bought 12 chicks and no one knew the difference one week later.

There were Boxers named Brutus, Weimaraner named Baby Cakes and a Dobermann named Beverly. For some reason cats never stayed more than two weeks. They had plenty of attention probably too much attention from the dogs.

Play Nice!