Doggie Audition

It's no secret that I love my dogs. Together they have formed a pack, the three of them (not those three above) and each one has his/her own distinct personality. They make me crazy most days, but no matter what happens, I can count on their loyalty. Life without them would be boring, for sure. I remember the day that I got my pug, Jingle. I bought her at a local Debbie's Petland. They probably got her from some horrid puppy mill, but the kids suckered me into it one afternoon, when our older pug became ill. They convinced me that he would do much better if he had a playmate, someone to keep him buzy and cuddle up with. "Another pug would give him a few more years and he'd have a playmate," they said. Call me a sucker, because the next thing I knew, we were all in the car on our way to the mall.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Once we got to the pet store/puppy mill, we scoped the cages for pugs. They had three fawn colored puppy pugs and we had been looking through the window at this tiny little boy pug. We watched him roll around and play and decided that we'd like to have him taken out to play with. We waited until it was our turn and told the clerk we wanted to see the boy pug. As he went to get the puppy, something made me say, "Wait! I want to see that one." I pointed to another pug three cages down. Don't ask me why, and the story has now become legend, but as I scanned the cages I saw this other little sad-faced pug and the words came out of my mouth before I knew they were coming.

Jingle is now Queen of the pack here, as she tolerates the boys antics regularly. A girl after my own heart, she will let them annoy her until she has had just enough, then look out! And they do. She's not the alpha, but she does not need to be if they push her buttons. And they both know it. I sometimes wonder what it was about her that made me change my mind so quickly, and made her fate change so drastically. I often think that to be a dog in a crate, waiting to be adopted must be a precarious state to be in. Wouldn't it be grand if a dog had some control over how he/she "auditions" for the role of a lifetime, family dog.


Jingle just may have telepathically sent me a message like this. You never know...