Dog Lovers Paradise

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I might lose a lot of my blog readers when I say this, but I am not a dog person. Don't press the Next Blog button yet. I don't hate dogs. It's just that I don't drool over them, like so many people do. I am not mean to dogs. I'm nice to them. I just don't have that same level of dog love that all my loved ones do.

Growing up in a family that eventually had nine children, we never had domestic animals. Oh, except for the cat I brought home when I was in grammar school. I hid it in the basement and the next day when I was at school, it had kittens. My mother was horrified and called the Animal Control Shelter. I never saw the cat or her kittens again.

My mother did allow--- small creatures. I had some cute turtles in a plastic bowl with a plastic palm tree. And I just remembered--- I had lizards that I adored. Chameleons. I made a villa for them out of shoe boxes. Before the lizards, I had a Guppy collection that came from the tank of my friend Gary Fay. He and I would spend hours watching the plump little fish spin around his large clean aquarium. When guppy babies were born he'd give me some to take to my house. I'd put them in a fish bowl where, sad to say, they'd die pretty quickly. They needed a big shiny air-filtered environment, that I couldn't provide.

But this post is about dogs. Kenz has, between her dad's house, her mom's house and Nana's and Daba's house.... four dogs. My son has two dogs at his house. And my sister-in-law and her daughter have a new addition, a frisky fluffy black and white Cockapoo named Geno. I am surrounded by dog lovers and Kenzie is becoming one, too.

I suppose it's a good thing. I have memories of my mom's mother, my grandma Peg being terrified of dogs. If we were walking down the street and saw a dog in the distance, we turned around and ran back to her house. I think something happened to cause her to be so phobic. Maybe she got bit when she was little.

When I married my husband, almost three decades ago, dogs came along with the deal. When we met he had Rocky, a huge German Shepherd. He loved German Shepherds and we had a few more of them after Rocky. Their names were Panzer and Max. Max spent so much time in my husband's home office that he got the permanent name--- Office Max.

Spaced over the span of our years together, we've had Rocky, Panzer, Rarely, Sugar, Chocolate,Max, Alice, Sancho and Cody. (Am I forgetting anyone?) Cody has been with us the longest. The other dogs have gone on to new homes. Most of them are in dog heaven.

Kenz is four and a half. The dogs in her present sphere (that I know about) include Jo Jo, Ivy, Francis, Cody, Macy, Cali, and Geno. She has already said good-bye to Magic, Juda, Marley, Jackson and Shelby, when they too--- moved on.

In the years to come Kenzie's days will probably continue to be canine loaded. Her mother, my daughter has always been fond of dogs. Take a look at Francis. (pictured above) If you can love that face, well then, you are definitely in the dog lover category. Kenzie thinks she is adorable!