Janet's Smiles: whisper

I've said many times that I am not a pet person. When the kids were little they clamored for a dog. My standard statement was "When you can care for your inanimate objects (toys, keeping their rooms clean, chores, etc.) then you can get a dog. Fortunately for me that worked. Even though my husband had owned animals in the past, he respected my wishes and we never had pets until about 10 years ago when he brought home a stray cat that had befriended him at work. That was "Whisper" and I tolerated her because she really didn't need much attention. She mostly ignored me and while I did feed her, I didn't go out of my way much to interact. She was around for about 5 years or so and then got sick and we had to put her down.

Not long after came Tiger (although my husband called her "Puppy" because she followed him around like a dog would). She was also not a lot of trouble because she was an indoor/outdoor cat so we had no litter in the house and she pretty much came in to eat and sleep and then roam outside during the day. Again, I hardly had much interaction with her except for the times that my husband was away. Then she would come and sleep on the end of the bed at night. Last week we had to put her down too after a mysterious illness/injury. Suddenly she couldn't walk and her tail wasn't moving. When she started losing control of her bladder there weren't many options.

I didn't think that it would matter to me and yet I found myself looking for her on our bed or in her favorite spots in the house and I realized that there was something missing. I also realized that all the objections I had to having a pet were no longer valid since the kids were adults and obviously handling their own lives. I didn't want another cat though. I thought that a dog would fit with our lifestyle now and may even help me lose a few pounds if I had to go walk it so for Mother's Day I decided that I wanted the family to go find a dog. My husband was still a little reserved but told me that if that is what I wanted, go ahead, he'd wait at home. Our son wanted me to pick a big dog but I knew I couldn't handle a large, slobbery animal and I didn't want a Pitbull or anything like that.

The people at the Peninsula Humane Society were so very helpful and let us sit with a couple of dogs to see which one would fit our family. We sat in a room and had the dogs brought to us. We liked the first one right away but saw both of them just to be sure. May I present Benedict Hunter Miles (Benedict for Benedict Cumberbatch because I love his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes and Hunter for the baseball player Hunter Pence because he is one of our favorite players).

This is a picture my family thought they would NEVER see!

He is a Terrier mix of some sort and is about 3 years old. He is so friendly and calm (although maybe the fact that he was neutered just 3 days ago makes a difference in that regard). He came right to us and although the Humane Society had named him Shorty, when we started calling him Benny he reacted right away. Now he has just about taken over our living room but we are getting used to each other pretty quickly.