Picking My Dog

Since I was a little girl I had always wanted a dog. For over fifteen years the only thing I wanted for Christmas and my birthday was a puppy. For my 21^st birthday, I decided that it was time for me to get one.  I started looking online and at local shelters. I didn't have a specific type of dog that I wanted, because I tend to like all of them and I am bad at decisions. There were many cute puppies, but none of them felt like MY puppy.

Then we went to the house of a lady who was sheltering 20-30 puppies for a local shelter. She had two pure bred miniature pinchers that my boyfriend and I went to see. When we walked into her garage the first thing I saw was a big baby gate in the middle with two litters of puppies in it. Of course I couldn't help but go over and pet those puppies while she was getting the miniature pinchers from the other room.

The puppies inside the baby gate were all playing and wrestling with each other. The lady housing them gave them some food and they were all fighting each other to get to it, acting like I wasn’t even there. Except for one. There was one puppy that had a white strip down his nose that ignored the rest of the puppies and the food and ran to me. He was climbing on the gate trying to get to me. I picked him up out of the gate and he instantly calmed down and cuddled into my arm. That was the dog that I brought home that day.

He was a six week old shelter pup and they had guessed he was a Shepherd mix. I did not care what kind of dog he was, the second that I saw him I knew he was the dog for me. As cheesy as this story is, I wouldn’t pick out a dog any other way. I think the most important thing is to go with the dog you have a connection with, not the dog that may be the cutest or the breed you want.

Here are a couple of pictures from the week we got him, and then a couple recent ones. He looks much different than how I expected him to grow. It was fun watching him grow, especially his awkward phase where his ears couldn’t hold themselves up and we didn’t know if they would ever stand.

Cat Personalities

Cats can have all types of personalities, but it seems no matter what the personality, it is always strong. My older cat, Cleo, wants to do nothing but cuddle and sit on everyone’s lap. She wants attention 100% of the time. The younger cat, Gracie, plays hard to get. She will come up to you and act like she wants a pet, but as soon as you go to pet her she runs away. She also gets into everything in the house and is amazed with the other animals. She will sit on top of my turtle tank and reach her paw in all the way to her shoulder trying to bop him. Eventually she will give up and lay on top of his tank. Then whenever he moves even the tiniest bit she gets scared, jumps about two feet into the air, and takes off running to another room. She will also spend countless hours watching the guinea pigs and trying to reach into their cage. 

Here are a couple pictures of Gracie. One is of her laying on the turtle tank and the other her poking in at the guinea pigs.

Every time I think of cat personalities I end up on Youtube watching videos of cats doing silly things. Here are two of my favorite cat compilation videos that always give me a good laugh. I did not make these videos, I just enjoy them.

Begging and Jealousy

Most of the time, I get nothing but joy out of my pets. However, there are two things that I cannot stand and cannot seem to break. My dog is jealous. My cat begs.

I know exactly why my cat begs. When our past cat became very sick the vet told us to feed her anything she will eat including human food. Of course, you can’t feed one cat and not the other. At the time I did not care that Cleo was begging because I was just happy that the sick cat, Tinsel, was eating. Tinsel was 18 years old when we lost her so she had a nice long life, but we lost her over two years ago. Cleo now begs for not only food, but also pets. In fact, she is insisting she is going to sit on my laptop right now to prevent me from writing this. When I eat, she climbs on me over and over and has the guts to try and steal anything she can get to off of my plate. I have tried everything I can think of to break this down to spraying her with a spray bottle. No luck.

My dog is jealous of anyone or anything but him getting attention. People cannot even hug in my house without him whining and trying to squeeze between. His jealousy is the most extreme when someone wants to pet one of the cats. If you pet a cat, he will chase the cat away and stand in her spot. If there is a cat closer to you than he is, he squeezes himself into any space available. Anyone sitting in the recliner instantly becomes smothered by the cat and dog, who of course fight over who gets to stay. And trust me, a 48 pound dog is NOT a lap dog. I just need to convince him of that. Unlike my cat begging, I do not understand his jealousy. We got him from a shelter when he was only six weeks old. Although one of the cats is only two months older than him, they were both here before him. It is not like he was here and comfortable and then we brought the cats in.

If I could fix these two habits, my house would be much more relaxing. I could eat and recline in peace. I only have one picture of Dameous and Cleo sharing the recliner, so I will share that with you. Maybe there is some hope…