Well, we have something in common Don. I too am a dog fancier or you might appropriately say I have “gone to the dogs.” My wife died about a year and half ago so now it is just me and the dogs and they are a female chocolate lab and a male lab mix and a tiny four pound, female Yorkshire terrier. I am glad to have them and really I think people that don’t like dogs can’t be trusted, although I admit that they can try your patience at times like when they, with their hearing that is three times as great as a human’s or with their sense of smell that is three hundred times as great, sense other neighborhood dogs near my house and yard and they try to demolish the back door so they can get out to bark at the invaders. They also are pretty expensive. Seems like every trip to the vet can cost 2 or 3 hundred dollars or more these days and in addition to these things, they can tie a person down. Fortunately for me, I can get my wife’s sister to come and keep mine, but if I didn’t have her to help me, I imagine my travels would be pretty limited. You hear such horror stories, I wouldn’t dare put my dogs in a kennel.
I did not voluntarily acquire any of these dogs. My daughter is an obstetrician in Little Rock. She keeps getting dogs, but then she is a very busy working woman and single mother to three children so she really doesn’t have time to take care of a dog and they usually end up at my house which is ok, I love them and am glad to have them. She has another dog now and I will be very surprised, if I don’t have a fourth dog very soon. This one is another female lab and a highly bred one that cost her $3,000. Half of the cost of this one came from my eldest grandson. He is an avid duck hunter and wanted the dog and talked his mother into getting it by saying he would pay half the cost. I’m sure she thought he would never be able to come up with the money, but she got fooled. I will be very surprised, if this dog ever sees the duck woods. This one, if she comes to live with me, will be a real challenge. She is the female Marley, if you’ve ever seen that movie.
