Will you share your fondest memory of your pet?

I have a dog named Bruno and one day when I was trying to let him outside he curled his back up like a scared cat and it really scared me because I didn’t know dogs could do that.

Looked kind of like this

ok but it makes me sad. Donnie always smelled good. He could not stink and I loved to smell and kiss the top of his head. The other one, if I may cheat is he’d smile at us. He would be looking at one of us then bare his bottom teeth only and that was his smile. How I miss him. Not sure pets are worth the heartache involved when they pass away.

Our cat was remarkable in so many ways, that when he finally died, neither the wife nor I thought there was a chance in hell of finding another animal that came up to his standards. He was my wife’s cat when I met her, and when I first met him the wife was giving him bath. I stood gaping in disbelief as a full grown big grey tomcat sat in a big basin of warm water while the wife sudsed him up. You could tell he wasn’t happy about it, his ears flat against his head, and the wife mentioned that if ever she removed both hands from him, he would be out of that tub before we could blink, and we would be drenched. But there was no scratching or biting – no struggle at all. When we moved into the house, and set up the phone, I was indignant at the discovery that A T& T actually charged you for an unlisted phone number. So we listed the phone in the cat’s name and so it remains to this day. It turned out to be a great move. Whenever I pick up the phone and hear “Hello Mr. Muffler?” I know what to do. He gets mail occasionally too! I have a whole lot of stories about that cat, and for years after he died, both the wife and I would swear to see fleeting glimpses of him from the corners of our eyes.

Oh so many.

We had a dog that was part cocker spaniel and part other black dog. Mom was the cocker, no idea who the dad was. She looked like a miniature lab, but mostly a spaniel. She used to go on point, instinctively. She was supposed to be a water dog, but she didn’t know it. She hated water for the first 9 years. Ding dong. When she was about 9 our street flooded really bad. It was fun for the kids. At one point they were splashing and playing in the street.Snuff was outside watching, and shaking and trembling. She was kind of neurotic. But then they started way back at the house and just charged across the street. Snuffy got all excited and lost her senses for a minute and charged across right behind them! It was deep enough that she was literally swimming for a minute! She came out on the other side, spun around, and stared at the water, disbelieving what she had just done.
Then she carefully got back in and came back to our yard.
She started doing that, going back and forth, getting happier and happier. In the end she was charging around, splashing and laughing with the kids. After that you couldn’t get her OUT of the water!
Only took her 9 years to realize she was a water dog.

@Dutchess_III that is so cute. <3

One day, my brother came running in the house screaming that the dog (who’s no longer with us) climbed the fence and was in the neighbor’s yard. My parents did not believe him, they figured someone left the gate open. He insisted that the dog climbed the fence. A few days later, the neighbors came to our door saying that they actually saw our dog climb the fence into their yard then my parents believed my brother. I witnessed it once also. He climbed up on the trailer that was in front of the gate, and then started moving his paws up the fence. He literally climbed a little less than half the fence.

I have a lovely black Lab called Wilson who plays and snuggles like a maniac. He makes me happy every day, but my favourite memory of him is probably how he just lay down on top of me once. It feels good to have 35kg of love on your chest.

My older dog Nerina died almost ten months ago. I still miss her terribly. She was with me ever since I turned 13, and she was a special dog – I wish I were half as wise and kind as she was. I have so many memories of her. One of my favourites is how she used to try and pull me out of the water by my hair whenever we went swimming. It sounds painful, but I loved that she cared about me so much.

I can not.

One of the best stories ever, again about Snuffy.
We had new neighbor’s move in next door, with their old, black cat named Midnight. Snuff and Midnight started this game. When the front door was open, but the glass storm door was closed, Midnight would come over and stand up on her his hind legs and peer into the house.
Who ever saw him would yell, “GET THE CAT SNUFFY!!” I had the daycare so there might be 6 kids yelling “GET THE CAT SNUFFY!”
We’d open the door and Snuffy would tear out of the house after the cat kids on her heels, yelling and cheering. The cat would run home and climb up a tree, and just sit there looking at Snuffs, like cats do, who would be dashing around and around the tree, screaming all kinds of threats at the cat about what she was going to do to him.
This went on for two years. Then, one day, we yelled “GET THE CAT SNUFFY!” and the chase was on. Again. But this time the cat got to his tree, stopped…and laid down under it!
Snuffy charged up to him barking and barking her threats which turned to frustration.
That cat just stretched and rolled over on his back with his feet in the air, kind of pawing toward the dog!
Snuff was quite upset. She quit barking, and just stared at him for a minute. The cat rolled back and forth. Finally Snuffy said, quite clearly, “That is NOT how this game is played. Cheater.” Then she chuffed and huffed, scraped her hind claws on the ground and stormed back home!
It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen!

Last one I promise. This isn’t really a memory right now, because it still happens. But it will definitely be a nice one to remember when I am older.
Bruno is always waiting at the window for me when he hears the bus pass our house to go to the bus stop. When I get close to the door, he runs from the window to the stairs to greet me. This happens everyday, unless he is outside.
He also cuddles up to me so close at night, that I am smushed against the wall… It’s a bed that can fit two people!

My favorite memory is more of a “type” of memory—whenever my dog sees something “new,” he gets really excited, and really curious. It’s hilariously endearing.

For example, the first time we showed him how a rubber band gets “bigger” when it stretches out, he freaked out. He started quietly woofing, and jumping between trying to bite at the rubber band, backing away from it, and pawing at it. But he wouldn’t look away. He seemed fascinated.

He had a similar reaction when I took a vacuum to a large storage bag to suck out all the air. He got very interested it when it suddenly started shrinking before his eyes.

When he hears music or sounds he has never heard before, he’ll lift up both his ears and cock his head from side to side, trying to figure out what it is.—This is after he got used to the idea that inanimate rectangles of various shapes could make these kinds of sounds, which he initially found fascinating in its own right.

And then the first time he saw a horse, his whole body got taller and he seemed to vibrate with excitement. For the rest of our walk he bounded and pranced along, apparently excited that such a large creature could exist in the world.

He reminds me to pay attention to the small things.

Cool dog @Soubresaut!

Patches and Lucifer – my two cats as a youngling – battling in true cat fashion all over the house. Once they rolled down the basement stairs and I was hysterical laughing.

Keelin – a little stray that I used to feed when I was in my late teens – taunting a gigantic diamondback rattlesnake in my garage. We shot the snake and fried it for dinner. I mounted the skin, too, and sold it for like $300. I wish I still had a picture of Keelin eating her portion of the cooked snake.

Bub – our pit bull/rottweiler mix – following me from room to room, always making sure I was safe. Protecting me from the Mormons who followed me home one night. He wanted to eat those dudes. Not letting hubby’s cousin, who was crashing for the night, off the couch to go to the bathroom because he didn’t trust him. Howling “RAI ROVE ROUUUU” after knocking over someone’s beer at a party and drinking it up. Bub was the friggin’ best.

Russell – my doxbull, I have him now. He was so depressed after the car accident that took away his ability to run like the wind. We got him a cat. Now he and Oscar play together all the time, and cuddle in his crate, and wrap themselves around my legs while we sleep, and clean each other’s ears.

Good boys. All of them. And good girl, Keelin.

@Soubresaut – OMG, Bub LOVED seeing the Big Dogs – the cows that lived up the road. He’d go mad wanting to go play with them.

@Muad_Dib—haha yes, like that! :D Big Dogs

@Dutchess_III—I think so!

OK, I have a story about Dakota. It’s going to be long. I have it saved in my “Stories” folder, in Word. Just copying and pasting.

Sherman Da German. He belongs to a friend of ours, Paul. Sherman is some sort of Himalayan Shepherd, or something. The best description I can give you is that he reminds of Chewbacca—all hairy and shaggy and HUGE, and not all that bright. But he is a gentle and friendly mountain of a dog. (Speaking of not that bright, that first night he was laying on the floor watching our ceiling fan go around. His head was moving in a circle too! Maybe that meant he is actually quite smart, but he sure LOOKED stupid with his head going ‘round and ‘round in circles! It was the funniest damn thing! :D)

Then there is Dakota. She’s our pure-bred, white German shepherd. She was a rescue dog of sorts. The guy who bought her originally got her because she came from a long line of vicious guard dogs. He worked and worked AND WORKED to make her mean and vicious. But you can just see by the look of her she has way too much class and intelligence for that redneck stuff. All he did was hurt her feelings. He finally declared her worthless and just gave her to us. She HAD learned some interesting moves, though, which she tried out on us, playing, until we yelled at her to stop sneaking up on us and knocking us down! She never did it again, even though it was great fun—for her.

And there are Smokie and Roxanne, our cats. In looks, they could almost be identical twins. Both long haired, a jumble of black and grey and white. Their personalities are light years apart though. Smokie was a weapon of mass destruction unto herself. She just she hated everyone, even people she liked. If she came up on the deck and we were all gathered, she’d give everyone a good growling hissing, all around, before curling up on the deck couch to sleep.

Roxanne, on the other hand, was special. He’s our gay, cross-dressing tomcat who acts like a girl. He loves everything and everyone, regardless of race, sex, or species. He doesn’t even care if it’s alive. He just loves it. He loves his fleas with same intensity as he loves our driveway, which is a LOT. He’s like, “I love you man. You love me man. I just love everybody, man.” He even has Smoky chillin’ for the first time in her 10 years, at least towards him.

One day Paul asked us to watch his big hairy dog over the weekend, because he hadda go race dune buggies. Well, we were also hoping that we might end up with some little Shermans.

Now, Dakota’s no little dog. I mean, she’s not huge, but she’s….well, she’s about the size of a German Shepherd. But Sherman is HUGE. He just towered over Dakota. I mean, this is a BIG dog. He’s good looking, too. He has long, dark, silky hair, all different colors, from black to brown to red. He looks like Smoky and Roxanne.

Sherman lives in the country, no fences, no housecats, so I knew it was going to be a bit of culture shock to come live with us for a weekend in town. My biggest concern were the cats, because I like my cats whole, not in bits and pieces, so I hoped they’d have time to set the record straight. They did. With help.

That poor dog…He’d been at the house for about 30 minutes, and Roxanne swished in. Dakota walked over and nuzzled him, saying “Hello Darling,” and Roxanne said, “I love you too man. What’s for dinner?” Dakota said, “Catfood.”

Suddenly, there was Sherman, barreling down on the cat, coming on like a freight train. He’s a country dog. They chase everything, even holes, and it’s no big deal. But THIS time all hell broke out around him! I’m hollering at him, Rick’s hollering, Roxanne is hollering, Dakota’s hollering, and THAT was a sight to see. Dakota is so calm, gentle and peaceful. I’d never heard her holler before, but she was in his face, lips pulled back, every tooth showing, ears pinned back, snarling. I had NEVER heard her snarl before. She looked like Cujo. (I will never forget that…)

Sherman was like, “JOMP BACK!!” and tried to stop his head long charge because the love of his life was going to kill him if he didn’t. There was no doubt. Kill him daid. He about broke his neck trying to stop. He was standing there, in shock, staring at the mass hysteria he’d caused, with big, confused eyes. His mouth dropped open in shock and his tongue fell out. The cat wasn’t even running away like a normal cat. It was a DEVIL CAT!!! He was all humped up, and swatting the living crap out of his nose, and spittin’ on him, screaming “I LOVE YOU MAN!! WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM??!!”

Poor Sherman. He was trapped in a house of lunatics who didn’t even know what a cat was good for. Not even the cat knew what it was good for, and they were all screaming at him for no reason. After a moment he stumbled back in to the living room and he laid down, sunk in utter confusion.

The second time I let Roxanne in the house on that first day, Sherman stood up in the living room, but made not one move toward him. Dakota just lifted her beautiful head and watched him carefully. Sherman just stood there uncertainly, glancing from the cat, to Dakota, who had a gentle, dangerous warning in her eyes. I gave Roxanne the option of going back out. He hesitated at the door and thought about it, eyeballing Sherman, who was frozen in his tracks. Then he looked at Dakota, his protector, and you could see him going, “Nooooo. I think I’m gonna love this!”

He sashayed into the kitchen and jumped on the table. Finally Sherman carefully, oh so slowly, approached him. His head was bigger than the cat and he didn’t even have to look up to see the cat because the dog is about as tall as our table. He slooooowly reached his nose out…Roxanne casually, calmly swished his long, sexy tail, with his eyes half closed (“I love this table, man,”) and let Sherman come closer and closer and closer…..and suddenly, WHAM! At lightning speed Roxanne slapped the livin’ shit out of Sherman’s nose again! The big lumbering lummox comes yelping and crying and slobbering into the living room and tries to crawl in my lap. OH I’M SO SURE!!! Dakota just laughed.

It was so interesting to watch the interaction. Dakota was so deliberate in her actions. Like, later in the evening on that first day, after the initial altercations, Sherman was laying in the living room and Roxanne walked over to his food bowl, completely ignoring him. Sherman picked his big head up and stared at the cat…..Dakota looked at Sherman, then looked at her cat. Then Dakota got up and walked over to Roxanne and nuzzled him. Roxanne arched and purred, “I love you too, man.”
Then Dakota walked over to Sherman and just stood broadside in front of him, blocking his view of the cat with a big, white screen, like, “You just saw an example of how we treat my cats. Get it glued into your brainpan!” It was like Dakota made a conscious decision to set an example.

After several seconds of staring at Dakota’s side, Sherman laid his big hairy head back down and Dakota walked away and laid down where he could keep an eye on the dog. Sherman didn’t move, didn’t even pick his head back up, but you could see his eyes twitching between Dakota and Roxanne. His eyebrows were all furrowed up, all worried-looking, alternately switching up and down as he’s glancing from Dakota to Roxanne and back, like, “Doo doo doo doo. Doo doo doo doo.”. Roxanne was eating Sherman’s food(!) and twitching his tail in a suggestive “come hither,” manner….but Sherman wasn’t falling for it! The record had done be set straight, in true female fashion! It was hilarious, but also very interesting. There was a whole lot of non-verbal communication going on between these animals.

Roxanne wasn’t quite finished with Sherman’s education, though. You know, peat and repeat. On the second day Dakota I were out on the back deck, which is in an unfenced area of our yard. Roxanne showed up to hang out. Sherman was just inside the door, feeling hurt because I’d slammed the door in his face when he tried to come out, because he’d run off the day before when I’d let him out on the deck with us. (He had gone lumbering down the alley across the street where a plethora of Vietnamese live, and the entire plethora was in the alley when Sherman showed up.…..Vietnamese were scattering like fireworks! I mean, they couldn’t know that Sherman The German wouldn’t hurt a fly! Well, he’d hurt a cat, probably eat it, but he wouldn’t eat a Vietnamese. But they didn’t know that.) So Sherman’s not allowed out except in the fenced area. He was standing was there just inside the door sniffing sadly, looking at us through the screen.

It came time to go in and Roxanne got first in line. When I opened the door Sherman was right there, with his huge, shaggy head hanging way down, almost to the floor. His head is so big that Roxanne didn’t even recognize it for what it was and he ran smack into Sherman’s right eyeball. Roxanne took a step back, saw who it was and WHAM!!!!. Poor Sherman didn’t even twitch. He just stood there with his head hanging down sadly like, “Why does she keep doing that to me?” (At that point I ‘splained to him that Roxanne was a “he,” and he started crying.)

Later on that night Sherman was eating and Roxanne moved up beside him, and kind of rubbed on him. Sherman felt him, but I think he thought it was Dakota…..until he turned to look. He did a massive double take and scrambled away, yelping and crying, trying to crawl in my lap again, and Roxanne hadn’t even done anything!

Well, he finally got his act together and quit freaking out. Roxanne quit slapping him all the time, and had gotten to the point that he’d ruuuub against Sherman’s legs, and walk in and out under him, and ruuuub on him when he was laying down. They finally got to be friends and they’d touch noses and stuff.

All of this time our other cat, Smokie, the Weapon of Mass Destruction, and Roxanne’s identical twin, had made herself scarce. She stayed in the garage, until the very last day. Poor Sherman didn’t even know that we had another cat. On that last day Roxanne was lounging on the table, and Sherman went to say a friendly “Hi” to him like he’d done 20 times before. Walked right up to him, with no hesitation, to touch his nose…..only it wasn’t Roxanne. It was Smoky. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! SPIT SNARL WHAM!! Blood started flowing. Then Smokie ran away.

Sherman started rocking and sucking his thumb after that.

That was a month ago. Today Paul brought him by again, and dropped him off. He was going to stay another couple days, hoping to try the puppy thing because it didn’t work the first time. The reason it didn’t work is because Sherman doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know the difference between an ear and a whoo haa.

After a few minutes in the back yard Dakota came up to me and gave me a look that said “Mother, he’s being a cad again, and I must say I really don’t see any future in this relationship.”
I explained that all men are cads, and didn’t she want to have children? And to keep in mind that he came from good breeding. Plus he’s really good looking.
Dakota said, “Yeah, but he’s really stupid, too.”
About that time Sherman came up, hooked one hairy paw around her shoulders (really!) and tried a new, more subtle approach…..“Hey good lookin’! Can I sniff your butt? Can I hump your ear some more?” Dakota just looked at me, sighed tragically and walked away.

After that rejection, you could tell that Sherman REALLY didn’t want to stay in the loony bin again. He wasn’t even gonna get laid, so there was NO reason to be there. He planned to leave ASAP, but I didn’t know that.

We have a wooden privacy fence. However, one small section is just a 5’ chain link fence. Dakota went over it once, to rescue a little kid, so initially I was concerned about Sherman jumping over the fence. Paul reassured me that Sherman does not jump. (That’s an understatement! At some point we took him to the lake. When we went to put him in the truck he just flopped his big hairy front paws up on the seat, his tongue lolling out and he looked around like, “Hey guys! How ‘bout a lift? Any day now!” and then Rick had to hoist his big heavy butt into the Suburban.) So I wasn’t worried about him jumping the fence. Turns out he didn’t need to jump. When he decided to leave he just walked through a wooden part of the fence. Literally. Left a big hole in the fence. We had to chase him down. He tried to hide behind a police car, but his ears were sticking out above the trunk so I saw him. Luckily there were no police officers in the car. At least there weren’t when I got there.

The End

Wow! Did someone read all that??!! Thanks!