Making Wishes

Have you ever been told that if you do this or that that your wish will come true. I was reminiscing about the first dog I ever got, it was Andy, another papillon dog. Getting Minnie made me think back to him and when and how I got him. I got Andy back in November of 1983, and he was 6 weeks old then. I was just a kid then, so I didn't have the foggiest notion that 6 weeks was too early to get a small breed dog. But anyway, how I got him was a miracle. Keep in mind, this was waaaaaaay back before papillons became as popular as they are now.

I was walking home from school one Friday afternoon, it was rather chilly too. Some months before our family had lost a dog, a big german shepherd, he was my father's dog. He just up and ran away and I never saw him again. I don't know where he went to, but I looked for him to come back every day. I even used to get on my bicycle and ride up and down the neighborhood and even up to 3 miles away in all directions, and I asked everyone I saw if they'd seen him. With no luck. When it became clear to me that he was gone and just not coming home, I began to do everything I could to wish for another dog. I used to watch a lot of television, and I once heard that if you made a wish on a dandelion (with the white, fluffy seed pedals) and managed to blow away all the little seed pods, your wish will come true. LOL! I know that can sound silly, but at that point I was so desperate I wanted to try anything and everything. So that afternoon, I found a good-looking dandelion with all the seed pods still present (there weren't many at that time of year!) I made a wish that I would get another dog, and took a deep breath and blew all the seed pods off in one blow. I watched them fall to the ground and then went home.

The next day, Saturday, my father took me and my sisses to the B&I, a nearby department store, while he went to my grandma's house to do her yardwork. The B&I also had it's own pet store. I always liked to roam around in there. Well, we were there for about a couple of hours and saw really nothing I wanted. Then my father came and as we were walking out of the store, there was a woman standing just outside the pet store with 2 small children holding a couple of fuzzy puppies with huge ears! Turns out she bred papillon dogs and she was giving these two pups away because they could not be registered. They didn't know who the father was, she had so many males, and there was no such thing as DNA testing back then. So she just gave these two pups away. One was brown and white and the other was black and white. For some reason, I was more attracted to the black and white pup.

I turned to my father and asked him if we could bring one home and said "they're free!" He thought about it for a minute, and said OK. I named him after a friend I'd had in school the previous year, Andy. I really liked that boy! He never knew that I named my puppy after him. Later on in life I learned Andy is mis-marked. One of his ears was half white and half black. Probably another reason he was just given away, even though a breed like that back then, she could have got thousands of dollars for him! Papillons are supposed to have solid-colored ears. This is a pic I took of Andy in 1988:

Well, we had Andy for almost 14 years. In 1997 we had to put him to sleep because he was suffering real bad with cancer. He lived a rough life, I mean let's face it, we were rough kids!!! I was a tomboy, so I played rough with the pets. Andy didn't like that much. Minnie is pretty healthy. I was just studying the AKC standard for the papillon, and it looks like Minnie is better quality than Andy was. She has a short coat, but I think that can change. It was 100 degrees in Olympia this past week, and Minnie may have just recently had a litter, and is blowing her coat. So those may be the reasons she has very little fur now. But living here where it is cooler, and without breeding, she should get her full coat back. Vegas is getting more and more used to her a little at a time. He still growls at her though. I reckon that'll continue for a while, but he can adjust. For all his life it's been no one but me, Anna, Odessa and Vegas. No other dogs. Minnie is so active. I mean, it's like having a 7-pound golden retriever in the house!! Minnie always wants to play. I will be getting pics of her hopefully today.

So now I have 3 dogs, and now 3 nicknames to call them. I call Vegas "the boobinator", I call Odessa "the butterball", and so far now all I call Minnie is "the big ears".

Here's the pics of Minnie as promised!

Vegas got in that one, but that was the only one!