Thursday, November 15

Tell us about your favorite pet.

Today's prompt is an easy one.

My favorite pet is my dog, Whitley. He's my favorite for many reasons. First
of all, he's the first dog I've been able to have as an adult. Let me
explain. After I moved out of my parents' house after college, I lived in a
series of apartments that didn't allow pets. Then, when I bought my first
house, I just had a cat, because I worked all the time. When I got married
the first time, my ex had a dog, a Dalmatian. He never worked with him and it
was one crazy ass dog. One day my husband got tired of the dog and took it to
the pound. That should have been my first clue that things were not going to
work out in the marriage. Several years into the marriage, I found out I
couldn't have children. Ex didn't want to adopt, so I threw myself into pets.
We had two cats at the time, and I asked for a dog. He said ok, and we spent
a lot of money on a cute little West Highland White Terrier puppy. I had the
dog only about two weeks, when I came home from work one day and the dog was
gone. Gone. The ex had given the dog away. Because he decided he didn't want
it. My feelings were never considered and it was never discussed. His word
was law. If he'd wanted a houseful of dogs, horses or trained elephants, we
would have had them. That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's
back. The marriage was downhill from there. I've never forgiven him for that.

Anyway, my current husband and I got a dog a couple of years ago. He's our
'baby'. We'd talked about it for a while. We didn't want a big dog; I was
looking for either a Yorkie or a Sheltie. We got neither. I saw an ad for
Silky Terrier/Jack Russell Terrier mix puppies. I called and we went to look.
There was one male and two female puppies. I latched on to the male the
minute I laid eyes on him. My husband knew he was going home with us. We even
already had names picked out. He was either going to be Whitley (after
Whitley Strieber, Ben's favorite author) or Jack (after Johnny Depp's
character Jack Sparrow in the POTC movies). Since he's part Jack Russell, I
thought Jack would be silly, so we named him Whitley.

I wouldn't trade Whit for anything. It's been fun watching him grow, since we
had no idea what he was going to look like as he got older. He's a funny boy.
He's got a Jack Russell body, with shortish hair, long tail and long legs,
but the hair on his tail is long, and his legs are sticks. His nose/snout is
long, but the rest of his face is silky. He's quite unique, and he's our
baby.

I can't post a picture with this post, but I will send one from my phone.