Fourteen

I was thinking about my family today as I drove home from working. Growing up, we had one dog. Not one dog at a time, but one dog period. He was a Border Collie, who my younger sister found in the alley behind our house on her way to school. We put him in the back yard, and it was a miracle that he was still there when we got home. Instead of shooing him back out of the gate and into the frightening world as my father had planned, he instead fell in love with that dog. And I mean love. (Remember parents, try not to make your children feel less important than the family dog.) Gordy. He was a good dog. He had his quirks, and had probably been smacked around a few times. But mostly, he was good. Mostly he was great. And he became ours for fourteen years. That is what is important.

Now, between us, there are currently fourteen dogs. Is that right? Yes: Kaspar, Zelda, Zorro, Patron, Spike, Boodha, Deafie(yes, he is deaf), Duchess, Zero, Lily, Halo, Zonah, Paxton and Wallace. (I never noticed how many "Z" names we have.) This is just my immediate family- myself, parents and 3 sisters. There are 6 separate breeds (Daschund, Mexican hairless or Xolo, Australian Shepherd, Doberman, Pomeranian, Pit-bull), and three definite mixed breeds. We are not breedists. Among these fourteen dogs, ten of them are rescue dogs. The oldest dog is eight(Zonah) and I think the youngest is 5 months(Wallace). It shocks me that a family who had one single dog in a 30 some odd year period would now have so many amongst us. All those years of repression have sent the floodgates opening up. We do love our dogs. Yes, we do.