Doggie, Doggie!

I can’t imagine living in a house without at least one dog. How boring it would be! In the photo albums that pollute our home, there are numerous pictures of me clinging to a hairy beast about eight times my size, my pacifier dangling precariously from my lip, dangerously close to being dropped, upon which I probably would have just shoved the dootsie back in my mouth and thought nothing of the germs crawling all over the floor…or the dog hair. I shudder to think.

Even through all of the hair that they produce, I still love dogs. Granted, it does get old having to lint roll your clothes every five minutes, using an extra strength adhesive one to pull off the lingering hair…but I STILL love dogs.

When I went to college, my family owned three dogs, but two were getting up there in age; unfortunately in the last two years, the two older ones have passed, but Sidney, the youngest at only five years old, is my baby. My parents got him for me for a birthday present, which my mom would swear was the worst decision of her life, especially because of the fact he is Newfoundland and Collie mixed, which yields major hairball. But truly, he is the most intriguing dog I have owned; he weighs about ninety-five pounds yet still thinks he is a lapdog.

Once Newton passed away later in 2010, Sidney was left alone at home all day by himself. Although I was at college, I could picture his depression, wandering from room to room looking for a friend to play. My parents told me he was becoming quite depressed, and so, as any good parent would, they bought him a friend. My mom was absolutely furious at her decision of buying the tiny teddy-bear like creature that greeted me at the door when I came home from college one night. Although she wanted to kick herself, she will admit now that buying Rocky was a good decision, not only to cheer up Sidney, but also for her and my dad.

If you’ve never had a dog, you probably won’t understand my seemingly-like madness over the furry creatures, but if you have owned at least one at some point in your life, I’m sure you can grasp what I’m saying. Dogs aren’t pets; they’re a part of the family. I know when I was having a hard time going through a breakup, Sidney lay in bed with me for at least an hour, just lying there, letting me pet him. The phrase “stupid dog” is such bull, at least for the dogs I have had; they are far, far from being stupid, probably higher on the emotional intelligence scale than most people who go to college, from what I’ve seen so far.

My roommate and I up at Elizabethtown have both grown up with dogs, so our freshman year, we were really feeling the absence of a puppy in our tiny dorm room. Of course, sneaking a dog into your dorm is not the easiest thing to do, but we were not about to settle for not having some type of furry creature in our presence. Elizabethtown has a Saturday Market (which, if you ever have time, I would recommend going; you can find so many things for very cheap prices. Of course some of the stuff is junk, but there are some good finds), and one weekend my roommate and I along with a few friends went.

Fate lead us to the outside portion of the market, where we lay eyes on five tiny rabbits curled up in a ball so tightly, it was hard to distinguish where one rabbit ended and the other ones began. We could feel the pity creeping in for the tiny, helpless creatures that were housed in a cardboard box without any blanket.

DISCLAIMER: ** Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT get a rabbit for a dorm room. There is a reason why the college tells you that you can only have non-carnivorous fishes. Although Jet (he was a pure black rabbit) was an adorable little thing when we got him, he didn’t stay tiny for long. And when we discovered that he liked to chew electrical cords (not by discovering him fried, thank God), my roommate and I both knew we had to get rid of him.

The idea of going back to college without a dog depresses me. As much as I’d love to steal Sidney for next year when I might be getting an apartment, I feel like my parents would somehow notice the lack of long black tumbleweeds rolling along the kitchen floor and the warm spot on the couch where he “knows he’s not allowed to lay”. Good dog.