November 12, 2020

We’ve only had one pet when I grew up, and I haven’t had any pets as an adult. But my dad passed away when I was 12. And shortly after that, we got a dog. And it was a small Maltese, white dog. And so we had to think of a name. And so I came up with the name Brutus. He wasn’t a mean dog. He wasn’t that, but I just thought it was a funny name for this small white dog. He was very friendly.

But he had one characteristic that I haven’t seen any other dog do. And we don’t know why, but he had a very awkward gait. We don’t think he had arthritis. But when he would sit, instead of having all four paws on the ground, he would sit on his back hind leg and perch up. I mean, he never had all four legs on the ground when he was sitting. He was kind of an unusual dog. He did walk on his two paws often, so he was just a fun dog to have. When we were in high school, my mom agreed to have homecoming floats, to have a homecoming float built in our garage. So our friends would come over and work on it. And one day, one of the girls was in the yard, and Brutus peed on her. We don’t know why, it just sort of happened.

So that’s my story of Brutus, our dog. We have a picture somewhere that we were going somewhere and I had a backpack on, and I was able to put him in the backpack, and I don’t know whether I was riding a bike or whatever. But he was there wherever we went. So other than that, with that dog, my cousin used to breed and show Malamutes. She only has one Malamute left, and she had a seizure dog that her husband trained. He had grand mal seizures, and he would poke him to warn him to lay down so that he wouldn’t fall. And now she is a rescue owner of Havanese. So she has about six Havanese. Other than that, those are all the pets. My other cousin loves cats, and when she would go out on vacation, sometimes she would bring the cat over, and we would have to babysit the cat for a few days.