petstory

I was never a big pet person--take em or leave em; but:

when we were living on my wife's reserve in Canada (Wikwemikong), we inherited a german shepard/labrador mix named Waub. Like all dogs on the rez, he came and went when he wanted-- no leash, etc . . .
my wife was preganant with our daughter and she gets a crazy craving for some chocolate and a Coke--insists I go to town to get one. It's 10 km to town (6.2 miles for the metrically-challenged)-- we lived off on the family farm, in the middle of nowhere, neaeest neighbors are about half a mile down the road, so I start riding this mountain bike someone left propped against the barn.
the dog comes trotting out of the woods as i start down the road-- wants to go with me-- i yell at him and throw rocks at him to make him go home-- he refuses so I just start pedaling, ignoring the stupid mutt.
all along the path, every time I come to a driveway, all these mangy unleashed Rez dogs come tearing after me-- Waub takes on all the dogs, keeping them away from me-- he does this the whole 10km to town and the whole 10km back. Damn dog saved my butt.
some idiot ran him over after we moved back to the states and broke his back--one of the neighbors shot him dead on the road "to put him out of his misery." lucky i wasn't still living there, might've done the same to the neighbor . . .

another time;
i fall asleep on the couch and my daughter gets her finger stuck in the VCR-- i hop up, try to get her finger out-- our cat, Littlefoot, apparently thinks I'm hurting her, so the damn things starts pouncing on my back, hissing the whole time--
I'm trying to calm my daughter down, get her finger out of the VCR while the damn cat is attacking me--
the cat has always insisted on sleeping with "the baby"-- it would always curl up at my daughter's feet, but started sleeping at my 4-year-old's feet soon after we brought him home from the hospital.
she used to get right up in our face whenever the babies cried, meowing loudly, as if to say, "hey, do something, dammit!"