My Life with My Animals

When I married, my husband, Barry gave me a miniature black poodle. We named him Brandy. We did not have children and Brandy became the third member of our family. We loved him dearly and enjoyed his playfulness and his outrageous behavior. Even my mother who never let a dog in her house, welcomed Brandy and even fed him buttered biscuits in her kitchen.

Here I am with Brandy, but he was so black Barry could
never get a good picture of him.

One day we went to the dairy barn and brought home a young cat. She was pretty and sweet, but covered in fleas. I almost poisoned her trying to de-flea her, but she survived and eventually brought into our house five kittens. They were born in a hollow tree in our yard on a weekend when we were out of town. To our surprise as soon as we pulled into our driveway and opened the car door, Mama Cat appeared with a kitten in her mouth. She followed us into the house. She headed straight to the guest room and carried her baby under the bed.She made the short trip five times as if she had planned all along that the guest room was where she was supposed to raise her little family.

We kept one of those kittens, a beautiful orange and white cat with a short little nose and long hair. Her name was Queenie. She was a small cat and we had her and her mother spayed so we had no more kittens for a long time.

One of my favorite animals was my horse, Pretty Thing. I got her when she was three years old, but I had been riding her since she was two years old and used on the farm to drive cattle. Our pets live long lives and Pretty Thing outlived all of them. I had to put her down when she was thirty-two years old, one of the saddest days of my life. 

She had been a major part of my life from the time I graduated from college. Pretty Thing was a chestnut with a milky blaze poured down her muzzle. She had three white stockings also. Her ancestry was quarter horse and she had been well trained to drive cattle. If she wanted one of them to move she would reach out and nip the bovine on the back. She could turn on a dime and I had to learn to sit tight and not fall off. The only time I had a bad fall from her back was when she fell on slippery wet leaves and my foot was caught under her weight. 

Brandy lived to be 19 years old. Losing him was not unexpected, but I grieved over him for months. I could not talk about him without crying. We had gotten our first Samoyed just before Brandy died. The new pup was named Nicki. In the book Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers and Fins; Family Pets and God's Other Creatures I write about Nicki and the day he was stolen from our farm. A Sammy puppy is the cutest and prettiest little thing in this world. A solid white furry mass of cute. You can see the second Samoyed puppy, Kodi, in the book. Kodi is also the gorgeous dog on the front of our book.

To see some photos of animals Barry and I loved and some I have wanted for my own, visit this page.