And now for something completely different...

Of late several of you have posted pictures and stories of your cats and dogs. Laurie Ann has Roogrrr and responded to a comment I made about him by asking me to post my Nic. Nic has a lot in common with Finn's Ebby- he is mostly black, and therefore doesn't take a great picture and he runs whenever we take out the camera, so I have tried to find the best ones that we have. Nic is now about 7 years old. Two years ago (June/July '04) we had Chloe who was a nine year old Rottweiller mix. Chloe was a love, slept with our youngest son as he grew up and kept his bed warm once he joined the Marine Corps. One night Chloe acted oddly at bedtime, when we awoke the next morning, she couldn't walk. She died shortly after we woke up as I held her, waiting for my married son to come over and help me get her downstairs to take to the vet. The first call my son made home after he arrived in Iraq and we had to tell him 'his' dog had died. I swore that if we ever got another dog (which DH said we definitely would not!!) that it would be small enough for me to carry and handle if it became ill. Meanwhile, I have a friend who runs a rescue organization who had been told of a purebred dog that needed a home. I did not tell my friend of Chloe's death, because I knew she would try to fill the void for us, and hubby wasn't ready. However, I usually ask how this dog or that one was doing, had it been placed yet. I couldn't understand why this one hadn't found a home- he sounded so good. She emailed me a picture of him, hubby glanced over my shoulder as I looked at it, took one look and declared that we needed to meet this dog, and if he was as nice as he looked, we should adopt him. You can tell how that worked out, he isn't even skittish of hubby's wheelchair! Also like Ebby, we didn't have to go through all that baby stuff, he was already trained and ready to go. Oh - no, I can't lift him, that's his only 'downside'.