Eye Poppin' Puppies

I remember a time in the not too distant past when and if two purebred dogs bumped uglies and made a half-breed baby, it was called a mutt and if you bought one, you probably paid all of $50 for your un-pedigreed pet. So when did two purebreds fucking and making that same little mutt become something chic?

True, not every cross bred dog is considered fancy enough to deserve the moniker of "designer dog". For example, my own dog who is half Black Labrador Retriever and half German Shepherd. Now if she were half Lab and half Poodle and was a puppy and not a senior citizen, she'd be worth far more than the $50 she cost me at a shelter back in 1991. About a couple of thousand dollars or so more.

Here are some of the top designer dogs:
1. Labrador Retriever and Poodle ( the Labradoodle)
2. Maltese and Poodle (the Maltipoo)
3. Cocker Spaniel and Poodle (the Cockapoo)
4. Schnauzer and Poodle (the Schnoodle)
5. Yorkshire Terrier and Poodle (the Yorkipoo)

Apparently anything you can get to fuck with a Poodle is currently all the rage as a cool pet. Does anyone else think this is insane? And how difficult was it to convince a highly gullible public that's always hungry for the next big thing that will make them the envy of all their friends to believe that this shit was the next big thing? Obviously not very, because people are stupid. I'll give it up for the breeders though, because this is one very lucrative new industry.

I read in the National Geographic News that there are potential problems with people just throwing purebred dogs together and mating them indiscriminately. No kidding. My favorite quotes came from Beverly Manners, a 30-year veteran breeder of German Shepherds and a licensed dog show judge. She says that not all hybrids are a good idea and that "unfortunately the designer dog phenomenon has unleashed a surge of amateur breeders who lack credentials and genetics expertise." She says that there needs to be an educated match. Take a moment to consider this: "Crossing a pug with a Pekingese, for example, could produce disastrous consequences. Both breeds have eyes that easily pop out of the socket to rest on the cheek. Surgery is required to fix the injury, often at the cost of the dogs' sight. Breeding the two could yield a dog that literally has its eyes falling out," Manners says. Yummy. (Props to nationalgeographicnews.com for these quotes by the way).

Bottom line. A mutt is a mutt is a mutt, no matter how you look at it and all these dogs are mutts, no matter what cute little name you want to call them and anyone paying more than the couple of hundred bucks they'd be donating to a shelter today for the privilege of owning a crossbreed is a fool. A fool with a ridiculously expensive dog. A dog whose eyes hopefully won't fall out.

Getting My Goat

I'd love to have goats. If I did get them, I'd love to own some black and white spotty pygmy goats. Those little guys are absolutely adorable. I had a friend who sadly passed away in 2003 who was a huge fan of goats. He told me that when he was young he didn't have a great many friends and as such, was often lonely. He did, however, have a pet goat, and when he'd come home from school in the afternoon, he'd grab a snack and both he and his goat would go up to his bedroom and watch TV together and share the snack. Very sad, yet very sweet all the same.

It was a couple of years before he died that my friend attempted to persuade David that it was essential that I have goats. I needed goats, he'd say. He told David that it would be charming for me to raise goats and thus spin my own yarn from their wool, and playing on my husband's great love for it, make my own delectable goat cheese. David's counter argument to this was to say that we could a) buy wool sweaters and socks made by someone else whenever we wanted new ones, and b) we could either buy ready-made goat cheese at our local market or if we were so inclined, could still make our own goat cheese from goat's milk bought in a carton from that same local market. Either way, all arguments concluded the same way. Goat related products could be easily had without what my friend considered the essential ingredient missing from our lives: the goats. Thank you very much.

Goats are gentle, comical, affectionate and intelligent creatures. They are simply a delight to be around. However, after giving this much thought, (both before and since my friend's death), I have come to the conclusion that I think I just like the idea of owning goats, not the actual practice of keeping said goats, which is a far less romantic reality. Goats are dirty little animals who require extensive and time-consuming grooming. And to be honest, they smell rather vile. I have also taken into consideration the fact that by no stretch of the imagination could I ever be considered a "morning person," thus making milking time for my prospective goats something of a problem. Me, up before the sun to gather their precious cheese-making milk? I think not. Now, if pygmy goats could be bred to happily and routinely shovel their own shit and smell like roses (or at the very least not nearly so nasty as they do now), that would be a nice start. But the real clincher for me would be the invention of a self-milking goat. I could go out to the barn around brunch time to visit my spotty little friends and they'd have their milk in buckets all ready for me. How much more perfect could it get?

Throughout our many years together, David has often waxed lyrical on his dream of retiring to the country (most likely in the hills of Vermont) to a small farm and raising a large flock of sheep. But that's another story entirely.

Dog Shows

I love dog shows although, surprisingly, I have never been to one in the flesh. I once went to a cat show with my mother and Griffin, but I only managed to last about 45 minutes in there before my allergies went into overdrive and I had to leave in order to not die from suffocation and killer hives. Having one cat at home is bad enough on the old respiratory system but hundreds and hundreds of them in one big room? I thought I wasn't going to make it out the door alive. But since I'm not allergic to dogs in any way, shape or form, I'm desperate to go to a dog show. The problem is, no one I know is as into dogs as I am and without a buddy, I've never gone. What fun is there in going alone?

My biggest dog show thrill of the year is watching Westminster in February (me and about a jillion other people). Valentines Day? Chocolates? The love of my life? Who needs any of those when there is a two night parade of perfect and near-perfect canines parading through my TV room! I adore the toy group and the terrier group more than anything. I like to critique the dogs and talk endlessly about the dogs and drive everyone around me up a wall about the dogs. I almost always peg who is going to win each group and sometimes even the Best In Show dog and it's almost never the dog that I would have chosen were I the judge. In fact, my favorite breeds almost never place at all in their groups. Doesn't matter to me though, I get a rush out of watching them and hoping that maybe next year, just maybe, one of my favorites will win.

It also gives me the chance to live vicariously through others who actually own my favorite little dog breeds. I spend those two nights imagining that one day I'll own the dog of my dreams, just like the ones on TV (but not worth nearly that amount of cash, thank you very much). And if I went to a dog show in person, I'd be able to see all the breed groups competing as well, something you don't get to see on TV. Just imagine: dozens of min pins, or pugs, or toy manchester terriers, or chihuahuas, or toy smooth coat fox terriers all in one place at one time. I would be in tiny dog heaven and no one could bring me down. I can't think of a more perfect way to spend a weekend. And with a few dog shows coming up this summer in my area, I'm definitely going to go to at least one. Someone I know must love me enough to want to see me happy for one afternoon and will consent to go with me...Right?

RATS!

Last night I saw my first rat that wasn't little and white and in a glass box in a pet store. It would have been loads better if it hadn't been dead. We were sitting in traffic at a red light when my husband pointed it out on the side of the road where it appeared to be rooting around in the grass behind the curb. Its bum and pink tail were in the road as if it were standing on its hind legs and it's front legs and head were bent over the curb and into the grass. There was some discussion between David and Griffin as to exactly what type of animal it was as it was very large, but I knew right away it was a rat. Rattus Norvegicus, the Norway or brown rat. I was all excited until I realized that it wasn't moving (my husband said, "Honey, it's dead. Either that or it's digging around in there really, really slowly." But hey, cut me some slack, it was nearly dark and visibility was waning fast). Still, it was my first sighting and it has to stand for something. I have always loved rats. They're amazingly intelligent and clean little animals. Extraordinary at adapting and surviving. They've also always been at the top of my "honey can I get a....?" list of potential pets for at least twenty years. I love the documentary that the Discovery Channel runs about rats every now and then. I've seen it a dozen times and it still thrills me whenever they re-run it. One of the best books I've ever read about them is RATS: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan, which is chock-a-block full of everything you'd ever want to know about the darling little creatures and then some. And anyone who knows me, knows that rats and one of my other favorite topics ironically enough go together hand-in-hand: plague. It doesn't get better than this. Here's hoping that the next time I'm lucky enough to see a real, honest to god street rat in person, it'll be alive and kicking. Maybe I should move into a dumpster in a back alley somewhere behind a busy restaurant?

Rat photo courtesy of sheppardsoftware.com. What a cutie!

Four Horses and a Front Yard

Had I been up earlier than usual the other morning, I would have had a front row seat to a very cool show that played out in my front yard. Apparently, three draft horses and a small donkey got loose and had made good their escape from the Massachusetts Lancers stables that are located just up the street from my house. The four fugitives wandered down to my house where they spent some time grazing on my lawn, took a stroll over to a neighbor's house and checked out the woods behind his place, and then returned to my house where they stood half in the street and half on my property, thoroughly holding up traffic while they considered their next move. After giving it some thought, they chose to meander up the street in the opposite direction where they were caught by the stable hands a short while later. I was really bummed when my mother told me that they were on my property long enough to have kept her from getting out of my driveway for at least ten minutes while they dithered about. I love horses and I would have been out there, even in my jammies, petting them and feeding them (and just maybe, hiding them so they could visit longer!). Instead, all I got was the story from someone who got to enjoy it while it was actually happening, a torn up lawn, and a whole mess of very deep hoof prints left by my four visitors. That'll teach me to be lazy and sleep in.

The Barnyard Bully

Things have taken a nasty little turn here in our otherwise idyllic lives. Seems I have a chicken with a murderous streak in her. Ruby Pauline has always been high strung and nervous, much more so than any of the other birds in the flock, and while she can be somewhat aggressive (it's a characteristic of her breed), I never expected it to turn as ugly as it has this week. It also doesn't help that she's a freak of nature: she's easily twice the size and nearly four times the weight of what nature says she "should" be, and by far the biggest bird we have. To say she's gargantuan wouldn't be an exaggeration.

So it goes without saying, that on a routine trip out to the barn, I was devastated to find my favorite little hen (and I mean the "little" description in the literal sense: she's only a sixth of Ruby's size) ripped to shreds and half alive in a corner. Feathers ripped out, comb torn, one eye damaged, bloody and tightly shut, and half her head scalped and blackish purple with bruising. I brought her into the house and cleaned her up and then Griffin and I set up a cage indoors and brought in her best friend from the barn to keep her company while she mended.

On closer inspection, it was discovered that Ruby's head and beak were generously covered with dried blood. Now, while this would appear to be all the evidence one would need to convict, it really isn't. Flock mentality is such that when one bird does something, those of a like mind will join in (kind of like an English soccer riot, if you will). So while it is most likely that Ruby was the perpetrator given the bloody face and predisposition to being bitchy, it wasn't definite. Until a couple of hours later that same day when I caught her on top of another smaller bird attempting to rip the back of that bird's skull off.

So now what do I do? Griffin was all for giving Ruby a dose of her own medicine, but that wouldn't be very humane, now, would it? I thought about removing her from the flock for a couple of weeks and then reintroducing her as if she were a "new" bird, thereby knocking her to the bottom of the peck order. But given her penchant for bullying and inflicting pain on those smaller than her, it would only be a matter of time before she stomped, pecked and dragged her way back to the top of the heap and that wouldn't solve anything. I could try to find her a new home, but there's two things wrong with this option. First, even though I'm not very fond of Ruby and I certainly don't like the way she does business, she does have sentimental value, however misplaced it might be. You see, as a tiny chick she was a gift from a very dear friend who passed shortly after he gave her to me and as such she triggers very, very fond memories for me. And second, what kind of person would I be if I gave someone else a hen that I know will eventually start beating the shit of their beloved birds? I don't think I'm that much of an asshole.

So today it was pointed out to me that I still have two more options. I could debeak Ruby. This is what the major chicken people do, like Perdue, where you cut off the point on the top half of a chicken's beak to prevent them from doing any damage when they peck. The chicken industry does this so they can squeeze as many birds as they possibly can into a very small area and when the birds inevitably become stressed from living in such conditions, they can't really hurt one another when they start to attack each other because their beaks have been disfigured. I don't eat big business chicken for this very reason, so I certainly wouldn't engage in this practice with one of my own birds. My other option, and while it's not permanent is still somewhat mean, is to put what are known as "peepers" on her. This is a little blindfold that looks a lot like the sleep masks women always wore in 1950's and 1960's movies (but without the ruffles and lace). It works like the blinders trainers put on racehorses, limiting vision and therefore any aggressive tendencies the animal might be unable to control. I'm not sure I like the idea of having a hen wandering around with an eye mask on, but what else can I do? A hen in drunken goggles who can't hurt anyone anymore is better than any of the other alternatives, all of which perpetuate violence in some way, be it Ruby committing the act, or me committing it on her.

Still, I have a little time to ruminate on all of this as my favorite little hen (why is it always the favorites who die or become injured? Why do the birds we merely tolerate live on and on and on without incident?) will be recovering for some time and is not going to be reintroduced to the flock anytime soon. Gentle force-feeding is on the menu today and everyday until she can eat on her own once again. And why is it that I somehow always end up with chickens in my house every few months? It isn't as though I enjoy having them in here because, contrary to what my family thinks (and would bet money on), I don't. It just looks like I do. In a perfect world, all my birds would be best pals, would live to ripe old age with nary an injury or illness and my house would stay clean and poultry-free. And none of my birds would have to suffer the indignity of wearing goo-goo-goggles to keep them on the straight and narrow.

An ALMOST Happy Birthday!

I've always been one of those people who can't walk into a pet shop (okay, so those went the way of the dinosaurs for the most part, and even though those faceless corporate pet supermarkets are a poor substitute, it's pretty much all we have nowadays) and think, "I want one of those, and those, and those." I do it every time I go. But it was my grandmother who had the "cool-animal-gotta-have-it-affliction" worse than I have ever had.

I remember when I was really little back in the 60's, back when pet shops had some of the most amazing offerings you could imagine. You know, all those fun animals that are now endangered, or protected or just plain dangerous, that you used to be able to take home with you without needing to know a damn thing about how to care for it, or how to protect yourself and your loved ones? Every breed of monkey known to man and a few chimpanzees as well, baby alligators and crocodiles, even a few really exotic animals, like wallabees and koalas, and even the coati mundi my grandmother bought for me on one of my earlier birthdays. Lest you mistakenly think that I had to be the coolest kid in my neighborhood, let me assure you, I never even got to touch the furry little thing. Nope, not even for a minute. In fact, I never even got the thing out of its cage, let alone out of the shop.

My mother, grandmother and I had been out shopping when we stopped in a pet shop in, I believe, Braintree. My mother is of the belief that we had just previously eaten lunch and my grandmother, who was by no means a heavyweight when it came to drinking, probably had had a couple and thus had gotten the idea to buy me the most unusual gift going. I remember my grandmother and I walking around the shop looking at the tiny spider monkeys while my mother went off alone to admire god only knows what, since she really has never been much of an animal person save for cats. It was then that my grandma and I saw the baby coati mundi and as I was immediately taken with its adorable stripey tail and pointy snout, she whipped out her checkbook and promptly bought the thing for me. I must have then run and found my mother and lead her to the cage where my gift was being removed for transport home.

I don't remember the actual act of finding my mother, but I very clearly remember her scream upon standing before the cage that contained the coati and being told that it belonged to me. She said, "There is no way that thing is coming home with us. I will not have anything that nasty climbing up my cabinets and all over my furniture. Who knows what diseases this thing carries (although given the plethora of weird animals in pet stores at that time, I don't think potential disease was ever really an issue until much later). You absolutely can not have this." And then she turned to my grandmother and said, "Miriam, get your money back right now." My grandmother and I were both very disappointed, but my mother's word was final (and really kinda scary).

I was very sad to not have been able to have it live with us, especially since learning that among other things, the coati mundi is an extremely vocal animal with a lot of "snorts, grunts, screams, whines and chatters." Frankly, owning a coati mundi would have rocked, regardless of what my mother thought. And one final thought: I have absolutely no memory of what my grandmother ended up getting me for that birthday. It certainly wasn't as cool as her first gift to me that year.

Has This Duck Been Eating Spanish Fly?

Phinaeus Taft is a very strange little duck. Like a great many of our ducklings, he was born too early in the season to be outside because of the cold, and as such, he was hatched in the warmth of our kitchen by a chicken hen (as a general rule, duck hens make not only lousy mothers, but frequently dangerous ones as well, as anyone who raises ducks can attest to). I always try to use the same little Silkie hen as she's not only reliable (a chicken who decides as she's grown bored with doing nothing but sitting for a month, she's entitled to pop permanently off the nest just a day before the scheduled hatch is a bad thing), but is a doting and gentle mother to the babies, be they chicken or duck. And it's also normal for the young ducklings to have a bit of an identity crisis when they first go out to live with the ducks. It usually takes a few months before they no longer want to be with their "mother" and the other chickens, but eventually they all give up on being permanently with mommy and even actually enjoy being active members of the duck flock. Having a young duck who is overly friendly with me isn't unusual as they've spent so much time with me during those first few weeks in the room in which I spend such a great portion of my day. It really is inevitable. However, there's friendly and then there's too friendly. And I would say that, without question, Phinaeus is way too friendly.

As we're approaching his first birthday, he not only should have long ago given up his fixation with the chicken hens (he hasn't. He spends hours and hours a day watching them and pacing up and down the divider wall between the ducks and the chickens and then immediately joins the chickens when they're allowed to mingle with the ducks), but also should have gotten less close to me as he's spent more time out in the barn. And with mating season here, he should certainly be pairing off with a duck, instead of trying to get with me. Seems young Phinaeus thinks I'm his hen. Seriously. He struts right over to me when he sees me, jockeying for my exclusive attention and will even physically push the other drakes away from me, biting them as he sees fit. He "talks" to me nonstop, to the point where he actually becomes hoarse and then loses his voice entirely. He routinely chases and attacks my son, whom Phinaeus apparently thinks is a potential rival for my affections (yup, this just gets creepier and creepier), and when he thinks he finally has me to himself, he does his ritual mating dance around me in a circle. As this has been going on since last fall, I had asked a respected breeder at that time what she made of this behavior and she told me, aside from never having ever heard of such a thing, "He'll either outgrow it by spring, or this situation will get really interesting." Chalk one up for the latter.

Every day I'm hoping the little duck hen who is smitten to pieces with him and follows him everywhere, even mingling with the chickens herself to be close to him, will finally catch Phinaeus' eye (female ducks are the ones who choose to pair off with a mate, not the boys choosing the girls) and that he'll finally see what a little charmer Babette Fleur is. So far, no luck. I frankly haven't a clue what do to. I continue to be as gentle and kind an owner to Phinaeus as I am to all the other birds and animals here, but I also try not to encourage the creepy mating madness, nor the hostility towards Griffin. Short of that, I'm stumped. I can however, safely say that while he is short, dark and handsome, Phinaeus is most definitely not only not my type, he isn't exactly my species either. Love can be such a cruel thing.

Boris and Tallulah

These are the first two chickens I bought years ago when I started in poultry. That's Boris Q on the left and Tallulah Jane on the right. They weren't exactly what I was looking for when I went out to buy my first pair, but when I saw them, my mind was made up. The conditions they were being kept in were deplorable: overcrowding to the point where none of the chickens could even turn their heads, the males were feather-picked to baldness due to stress-related aggression, they were bone thin, starving and dehydrated, and little Boris had a broken leg, most likely from his previous owner having stepped on him while trying to make his way through the inhumane clog of chickens in the pen where they were being kept. I chose Boris because he was the only cockerel who didn't try to attack me when I picked him up, and Tallulah because I had never seen a chicken who at four months old was still nearly chick sized. The two became instantly inseparable and remained so for the rest of their lives together.

It became apparent fairly quickly that Boris was more than just physically sub par from his previous mistreatment. He never crowed. He had seizures. He had trouble remembering how to get in and out of the barn, he wouldn't eat unless you put him directly in front of the food, and he didn't scratch and graze the way a normal chicken or rooster will when out and about in the yard. And always, Tallulah was right there, just like a mother hen with her little chick, pointing out tiny morsels in the grass to him, guiding him out of the forsythia hedge when he wandered in and panicked, unable to find his way back out again. The two of them would stand for hours, doing nothing at all.

People told me to kill Boris, that providing daily care for such a bird was a waste of time. He couldn't be bred (I never saw him hump anything out there anyways, not once), he cost money that was never recouped in any way, he was useless. And while this may have all been true, he had had such a horrific start to his life, there was no way I wasn't going to give him a happy home for as long as he lived. Pets are not expendable because they aren't perfect. Besides his rather lengthy list of flaws, he really was a truly beautiful bird to behold. Two pounds of soft, lush and beautifully colored feathers. And the gentlest rooster to ever walk this earth. But Boris aside, a great many times I also wondered if Tallulah might be as slow as him in some ways. She didn't dash about like my other hens. If you wanted to pick her up, like Boris, all you needed to do was simply walk over to her and lift her. She never joined the other hens in the flock, but simply stood there looking vaguely about, usually next to Boris, never more than a few feet away from him. She laid only a handful of eggs in her lifetime. She was very quiet; no cackling, no shrill calls ever came from her mouth save for one time. Her life was slow and dull.

When Boris became ill and we thought he was going to die, the two had to be separated while he underwent treatment. From out in the barn came the most desperate and mournful crying throughout the night. The next day, despite doctors orders, I moved Tallulah into the recovery cage with Boris and she immediately quieted back down. Surprisingly, Boris would live another three years and when his time came, Tallulah was with him, standing right beside him as he breathed his last, ever the quiet and stoic hen.

And then the most amazing thing happened. A few days after his death, when Tallulah knew she no longer needed to stay near poor, little special-needs Boris, she came alive. She was finally free to be the hen she might have been without her burden. She ran about, she scratched, she clucked, she got into little fights with the other hens. She was a chicken at long last. Clearly she had felt it was her duty to keep him safe, and it was her chicken kind of love for him that kept her loyal in spite of what was clearly a very depressing way of life for her. Her sudden transformation was startling yet exhilarating to behold. And little Tallulah Jane got be and act like a real hen for almost a year and a half before she too passed in old age.

She was a very special bird, and when people have said to me upon observing a bird at a swap meet or a show, "They're just birds. They have no feelings or brains," I sometimes tell them I beg to differ and relate my story. Sometimes I just walk away, but always I'm reminded of my two unusual chickens: the one who needed such desperate help and the one who was always there to give it to him unconditionally throughout her exceptional life.

But Can't A Girl Look?

As I've mentioned before, having an old dog really sucks. Almost everyone in my family keeps telling me to have her put down because she's become little more than a four-legged hairy lump who shits all over the house indiscriminately, but I can't do that. I simply can't, with any semblance of a conscience, kill an animal simply because it's become an inconvenience to me, or because that animal is no longer "fun". She isn't in any pain, she isn't unhappy, she simply exists in a way that no longer has much to do with me or anyone else in this family, save for her brief happiness at greeting me when I come home from outside the house. And so she lives on.

But it still really does suck. And considering that I've had a very good long time since my dog began her decline to ponder how much I wish I had a "fun" dog, the waiting for her final demise makes it even harder. I often feel very guilty about my daydreaming of the puppy I will own once poor old Cordelia has shuffled off this mortal coil, yet I can't quite seem to stop my wishful thinking. I find myself regularly shopping through the lists of available puppies at shelters in my area and become wildly ecstatic when I see that one of the dogs "of my dreams" is available right now. Chihuahuas, Min Pins, toy Jack Russells, Pugs. Inevitably, I become very depressed when reality sinks in again and I glance down at my sweet old girl lying at my feet. I know there is no way I could ever bring home a new little bundle while she's still here with me. After all, that would be the ultimate betrayal, wouldn't it?

I've been doing this for months, and I can't seem to stop myself. Every weekend I manage to find a dog I could adore were I to go and bring it home, but last weekend was the worst. I saw a nine month old Min Pin up for adoption at the Mass Humane Society and I thought, "How perfect! A tiny purebred dog, still a baby yet housebroken, and in need of a family. And the $200 donation fee would go to the Humane Society and help other homeless dogs and cats" (it turns out after the fact, rather horribly, that this little dog was stolen from the pound late Sunday afternoon when thieves cut through the fence and made off with him, so I hope, hope, hope he's with a loving family and not being abused by monsters somewhere). I was so happy for all of ten minutes, until I realized once again, that there was no way I could do this to my beloved Cordelia. In fact, I became so depressed, I cried. I know that sounds silly, but having a canine companion is very important to me. A vital part of my being, if you will, and having a dog who can neither see nor hear me very well, who can no longer go everywhere I go and who interacts with me very little in her fog of dementia, simply doesn't fill the need I have for the doggie friend that inhabits my world. At this point, save for those blissful moments of homecoming, I am little more than a home health aide to my old friend, meeting her needs until such time as they can't be met any longer.

My husband has now forbidden me to look at the little dogs. He says he can't understand why I put myself through the pain of seeing all the available little puppies out there when I know I won't get one until Cordelia is gone. I tell him that it starts out making me very happy to see all those lovely little dogs waiting to be chosen for their forever homes, and being able to imagine myself owning one or two of them, and it's only after the fact that it makes me sad. He says that because the sadness inevitably always follows the initial happiness, I should know better than to look at all, and that it's just stupid to put myself through this over and over again. I know he's right but I just can't stop. As the years roll by with Cordelia living on and on, yet becoming less and less of a viable pet, I grow more anxious for the day when I'll be able to shop for a new friend for real, not just in my mind. I'm more than ready, yet desperately trying to keep strong my patience and my love for my long-time companion. She's been a magnificent dog, and I cherish the 16 years we've spent together, but one of us has grown very lonely these days and it's been a long time coming.