This week we learned that Kris and his family are getting a puppy. I don’t even know the gender but s/he is a real cutie. We do know that she is a shih tzu.
My family has always has dogs since the day I was born. Mom and Dad had a black w/white Pomeranian when I was born named Tippy. She was never my friend; even dogs can be jealous, but she was my first introduction to canines and I have been awed by them ever since.
When I was pregnant with Kris, Bernie and I got our first dog. Buffy was a buff colored cocker but did not like men. She also wasn’t crazy about Kris who was born just a few months later usurping her place in the family.
Ginger was the most precious dog of all. Another cocker, she was small and loving and a joy to our family for the seventeen years we had her. It was so hard saying goodbye to her after all the love and joy she had given us. She was even loved by our vet who kindly met us on a Sunday to give her her final peace. We were lucky that both our cockers were small without much hair. And they had the prettiest faces, not the smashed nose that so many cockers often have.
While we still had Ginger, we decided to go with a bigger dog. We had cared for Michelle’s golden, Bacchus, and found having a big dog was kind of fun. I was prepared to find a golden, but Bernie had had an Australian Shepherd as a young adult and he thought he would like that kind of a dog.
Welcome Maggie. Maggie was a rescue who had been living on and off the streets for most of 
her life. She was beautiful but big. She weighed more than 65 pounds and lumbered along as we would walk. She didn’t like being a leash but then why would she. She would just follow us along as we walked. She was a charmer, to say the least. Maggie only lived with us 11 months. We discovered she had a tumor in her brain that made her back legs weaker and weaker. When she could no longer get up on her own, we had to say good-bye to her. She was only 8 years old and eleven months wasn’t enough time to really let her know how much we loved and needed her. She was supposed to be our comfort when we lost Gingie, but Gingie was still going strong.
Our next dog was the most wonderful one would could ever wish for except for one major flaw, he was petrified of other dogs and would react by attacking if one got near him. He was very respectful, though, and never once got between Gingie and us. By now, she was older and had gone through having Bacchus live with us, then Maggie came into and our of our home and now another dog. She had about had it and actually had absolutely nothing to do with Skye, which was just fine with him. With Skye, we got involved with dog agility. What fun we had and Skye was the perfect “first agility dog.” He was so well behaved and we, together were so attuned. It was such a joy to run with him. There will never be another dog like Skye. We lost him to a very debilitating disease which also affects humans, myasthenia gravis. He was diagnosed in March and six weeks later he was gone. Our world was shattered and it is still hard to think of him without my heart breaking.
After losing Ginger, we adopted Roxie who was born in Spokane, had a family but was given up at 18 months old. She 
is a very pretty girl but very reserve, a barker (yuk) and much less willing to do what we want. She is not people or dog unfriendly, but she is the most outgoing dog we have ever had. She does not give kisses and hardly wags her tail but I think she is happy to be in our family. We give her lots of love and lots of opportunities for exercise which she loves. She is turning into a nice agility dog, but will never enjoy agility the way Skye did. After a run, you could tell that he loved what we had just done and was ready to go again. For Roxie, it is the reward. “Where is the food?” is all she cares about at the end of a run.
After losing Skye, we thought Roxie would like a doggy companion. She had tried, unsuccessfully, to get Skye to play
with her. She loved going to Michelle’s and playing with Cassie, Michelle’s female golden. So we were looking for a dog so she would have a companion and we would, hopefully, have another agility dog. Skete was found wandering the streets of Chehalis. He was rescued by a dog-loving lady and her family. They couldn’t keep him because they were already expecting the arrival of two new shelties to add to the one they already had, so she was looking for a good home for “Shep” whom we later named Skete. Skete was only 15 to 18 months when we got him, so he is a baby and very frisky, much to Roxie’s dismay. She is growing to like him more and more and they do play together, but mostly it involves Roxie standing and barking while Sketey runs circles around her. I think they are having fun????
