Exceptional A continuing saga of the animals in the Shelby family. Animal Antics and Interactions : Perils of a Pet Owner, Part two by BethShelby

After Kokomo entered our lives, we assumed we had been educated to the fullest on pet egocentrics, and we had evolved to the point that we should be able to handle whatever abnormality any animal chose to toss our way. Actually Kokomo remained a part of our family until he reached the ripe old age of nineteen. When he was about ten we gained another dog who was under sentence to face the firing squad, due to his being party to gang violence. Cody was an Akita blend. He had been purchased as a pup for my grandchildren, who having inherited the Shelby DNA, were not adept at handling pets. Cody wasn’t a bad dog, but being allowed to roam free, he’d fallen into bad company. He had enough blood stains on his white chest hairs to place him at the scene of the murdered emu. The lady who owned the emu was threatening to sue, if the owners of all the dogs involved didn’t get rid of them immediately. We felt Cody didn’t deserve to die just because he’d fallen victim to peer pressure, and we agreed to take him, since we had a large fenced yard containing no emus. We’d hoped he and Kokomo would become friends, but we had to settle for the fact, that at least they didn’t fight. They simply chose to ignore each other. Cody was much bigger than Kokomo, weighing over ninety pounds as opposed to about thirty-five for Kokomo. The amount of food this new addition could consume would make a dent in our grocery budget. As long as we continued to live in the house with the large fenced backyard, he didn’t give us serious problems. Evan was proud of Cody, and he was a beautiful dog. When we moved to a different location without a fenced yard, things changed for the worse. He remembered his days of freedom and became an escape artist from the smaller fenced area, electing to go on regular walk-abouts in another subdivision. Cody always came back home to us eventually, after he'd satisfied his need for adventure, but not until Evan and I had spent hours running through the woods and up and down the steep hills, calling him until our throats were dry, and we’d both concluded this couldn’t be good for our chances of long-term survival. Usually by that time, we really didn’t care if we ever saw him again.  If Cody was on an emu hunt, he wasn’t able to locate one. Kokomo, on the other hand, continued to show his temperamental side. At one point, he slipped into the house when the door was open for a few seconds, and seeing our daughter, Connie, sitting on the sofa, he raced over and jumped into her lap. If it had been any dog other than this one, there would have been no cause for alarm. It might have been a sign he was interested in being sociable, except that if she dared move in any direction, Kokomo let out a threatening growl and showed his teeth. Connie turned white and sat motionless, fearful to breathe. I finally managed to rescue her, without anyone being seriously injured. When my dad came to live with us, he was in a wheelchair, and for once in his life, Kokomo gave us an unexpected surprise. When Dad saw his wagging tail, he decided to let Kokomo inside. To everyone's amazement, Kokomo walked over and laid his head in Dad's lap. Dad and Kokomo became good friends, and he never showed a sign of aggression around him. This change of attitude didn't apply to those who walked upright on two legs. About this time, still another dog came into our life. My daughter, Carol, brought this young puppy into our lives. Mitsy was born a runner. She looked barely old enough to be weaned, and she had evidently escaped from her owner.  She was moving through a parking lot at such a fast pace, Carol was unsure what she was. According to Carol, she was hopping like a rabbit.  The tiny Chihuahua appeared to be a purebred. She was long-haired with a black with white chest and the most adorable little apple shaped head and face ever assigned to a dog. Carol gave chase and managed to grab her, rescuing her from being hit by a car. No one around knew where she came from. Carol left notices at the surrounding stores for anyone who might be looking. When I first saw this adorable puppy, I fell in love. After many years of convincing herself that she wasn’t a dog person, Carol had turned over a new leaf and reinvented herself. She now owned a toy Poodle and a Maltese. Carol would have kept the new pup in a heartbeat, but her dogs didn’t care for the new addition. I prayed the owner wouldn’t come looking for her, and my prayers were answered. Carol finally agreed to let me have her. With our, less-than-stellar track record with pets, I had to do a serious sales job with Evan, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. From the day she came to live with us, keeping her became a problem. Mitsy continued to be a runner, and she would be one all of her life. If our front door was opened for just a heartbeat, she was there, ready to take off like a race car. She didn’t look in any direction; she just ran, not caring which way she was headed. It became obvious I would not need to join a gym to get my cardio-vascular workouts. Mitsy would take care of that. There is more to the story of Mitsy, and I recognize this could become too long. There are still a few other pets in our future, so I’ll let my readers rest for now, while I go about adding part three to the saga of the pets which have managed to make our lives fuller and more chaotic, all at the same time.             Author Notes For those of you who haven't read the original "Perils of a Pet Owner, it was written over ten years ago, but I rereleased it and it is on this site and is still active, so I hope you read it, Part two is new. I hope to post part three.

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