The weekly Show Us Your Life at Kelly’s Korner is all about our pets. I am a sucker for my dogs, so I’m excited to get to do a post about them!
My dogs are technically my parents’ pets but I consider them mine, too. Minus the parts where I have to buy them food and pay for their vet bills. Then they’re entirely owned my them. I’m going to talk about the order in which we got them.
Baytor Nerrise, "Rottador" mix (rottie/lab),8 years old
Baytor, who is named after a Star Trek character (my parents get the blame for that one), is truly a marshmallow of a dog. In fact, we often call her Marshmallow. She is 100 pounds of dumb dog. We got her from the pound about six and a half years ago. She loves all of us (me, little sister, and parents), but Dad is her person. She’s slow and doesn’t like to take long walks or anything, but we’ve started taking her to the neighborhood park and she likes it. Her idea of playing catch is to lie in the grass and when we throw the ball to her, if she can catch it sitting down — great. If not, we have to get the ball and throw it again. It’s called Lazy Catch, and she’s a pro at it. It makes me sad to think we don’t have very many years left with her (life expetencies for rotts and labs 9 and 12 years), but she’s already showing signs of aging. She’s much slower than she used to be, and over the last few years she’s had constant eye, skin, and ear infections. It is going to be a heart-breaking day for all of us when she dies or has to be put down. For now, we just enjoy out “So Big” (as we affectionately call her, and she responds!) and appreciate the fact that she is still here.
Tommy Dog, Rhodesian Ridgeback, 13 years old
Tommy was an awesome dog. We had to put him down on July 1 of this year after he developed a rapidly-growing cancer in his leg, and it is honestly one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. My mom and I stayed with him through the entire euthanasia, and while I will say that I will be there for any dog I have until the end, it was terribly hard. He lived a good life, though, because the average Ridgeback has a life expectancy of 9 years, and he was almost 14 when he died. We had him for three years and he was such a good boy (our family’s only boy dog, actually!). He loved walks and playing with tennis balls. You can read more about him in the doggie obituary I wrote for him. (Awww, I just read this again for the first time in a while and it makes me miss him. He really was such a good, good boy!)
Chloe, Chihuahua, 4 years old
Chloe is also another one of our pound puppies. My sister, who was four when Chloe came to our family, really wanted a dog of her size, since we had two big dogs. My parents said, “Sure!” (actually, I think it was my mom who said sure and my dad just went along for the ride) and Chloe came to be part of the family. She is named after Chloe from Beverly Hills Chihuahua and has the same initials as my sister (yes, all of our dogs of middle names). Chloe was a really ugly, malnourished dog when we got her, but now she weighs a whopping 11 pounds (she is a larger chihuahua; she’s n0t one of those gross fat ones!) and is a very pretty girl. Her back legs are longer than her front ones, so she stands at a slant, and when she runs the back of her body drifts to the side, so she never runs in a truly straight line. She needs a lot of walking and running. She plays hilarious games with us, and puts up with a lot of crap (like when I dress her in my sister’s Build-A-Bear clothes). She is a good girl, and we’re stuck with her for a long time because chihuahuas basically live forever.
Her Halloween costume (my dad is a police officer)
Working on her lazy
She has fun ears
