When I was 6 years old I fell in love with a tiny beagle puppy at the pet store. It was so small that it was sleeping in its food bowl. I believe their were a lot of tears and begging until my parents understood that I really NEEDED a puppy. Of course, that pet shop beagle was too expensive and my parents found some puppies in the classifieds that were only 50$ each instead. I wanted to name my new beagle "Pup-pup", but was overruled and we named her "Pokey" after my dad's childhood toy. I can still recall the smell of the soiled newspaper in the garage that I had to clean up while she was learning to do her business outside. I believe we let her stay in the garage a lot in the winter of her puppyhood, but after that Pokey was an outdoor dog. I had dreams of training her really well, but she was very stubborn. We went to 4H obedience classes and I spent hours working on "sit" "stay" and "come" with her. She never mastered "come" on command. She frequently escaped from her rope outside and I would have to go around the neighborhood looking for her. She also had a hard time with "heel" and I have a big scar on my knee from being dragged down the road while she chased another neighborhood dog. Eventually, when we were both a bit older and more astute, she learned "lay", "shake", and "speak". She was always digging holes -- I sprained my ankle when I ran through one covered with snow. Once we made a video about her in the garage. It was called "Pokey TV" and mostly just had a nice song and some kids riding bikes in circles. She was a bit like Snoopy and used to sit or stand on her doghouse, which had a flat lean-to type roof. It made a nice bench for us to sit on together and have a good talk and pet or brush her.
Pokey paved the way for a variety of other pets. I got an aquarium one year for Christmas. We filled it with guppies, sword tails, and midnight mollies - live bearing fish. That was great except that every morning I had to check the tank to make sure that there were no babies swimming around, in danger of being eaten by their parents. I had a little nursery pen that I would gather them up in until they were big enough not to be in danger. I also had to siphon out the tank every Saturday, which was pretty gross. We had several pet mice over the years. We made tunnels for them to play in out of various recyclables. For a school project one year my dad helped me make a large set of tunnels mounted on a wooden board so that the kids could watch the mice exploring. Most of the mice eventually got tumors and died. We got used to that and I remember we began just letting them go in the field at the park when a tumor started. My siblings eventually got their own dogs or cats as pets too, though I don't remember spending much time with those pets.
I guess all those experiences with taking care of animals helped set me up for farming! Lots of work feeding, cleaning, and caring for the animals. It's probably also part of the reason why we are waiting until we have a fence to get a dog. The kids pray almost every night "Please bless that we can get a fence so that we can have a dog like Zeke." Zeke is our friends' in Utah's dog who came in to lick our faces to wake us up while we were staying at their house. We probably won't be getting any kind of hound dog though!
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