I have always loved animals and my family was always picking up animals and trying to make pets out of them. We had the baby squirrel that fell from the nest, the sea gull whose wing had been shot off, there were the tortoises and lizards and snakes from our desert camping trips, my brothers school class chicken that he brought home at the end of the year, and the usual assortment of cats and dogs who came through our lives.
My parents were old fashioned people from hillbilly country in Kentucky. They never bought a pet until I, the youngest, had left home. When my mother's 200 year old kick dog got to where they thought she'd go at any minute, my father went out and bought the most adorable little pedigreed miniature schnauzer puppy. His reasoning was that he wanted my mother to have a replacement before the dog she had literally had for about 17 years died. The old dog, Lily, outlived my mother by about 6 weeks.
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