The Cast of Characters

My name is Suzanne and I live in North Little Rock Arkansas with my four dogs who are really my short hairy children. Allow me to introduce them:



This is Daisy...she is a rat terrier/beagle mix from my local Humane Society. She looks like a Jack Russell Terrier and has the personality and behavior of one too! She has at times been a true "terrier terror". I can't believe she was 9 years old in June. Daisy's mother was a full-blood rat terrier according to the Humane Society where Daisy was born. She was dropped off or wandered up as a stray and had puppies the next day. I had just lost a dog to bladder cancer and wanted to adopt a sheler dog, but I really wanted a puppy. They told me about Daisy's litter which was being fostered until they were old enough to adopt. They let me know when they would arrive, and I went eagerly to meet them. However, all but one had gone on a field trip to a local pet store that does adoptions through rescue groups to be seen and possibly adopted. That one was so sweet and cuddly. Trying to be sensible, I waited for the others to return so I could meet them too. There was a littler of 6 and one had already been adopted by the time I even found out about them. I decided I should meet the other 4 before I committed myself to Daisy, who by this time had been playing with a ball with me on the floor and crawled into my lap for a nap when she got tired. The others returned, with potential families on the way right behind them. I guess things happen for a reason. And really, after all that time with Daisy, how could I have NOT taken her anyway???



This is Rose...she is a dachshund/Lab mix. I don't know how it happened either! She was another rescue, but from my vet this time. She had been hit by a car and was brought by the driver in to the vet's office to be euthanized since she was unable to move. The vet determined that she was not in any pain, and wanted to wait in hopes that she would regain movement. Within a couple of days of her accident, she got her functioning back! So they spayed her and started looking for a home for her. Daisy ate all of my mother's prize Rose of Sharon bush and got good and sick and had to go to the vet for the day. When I went to get her, I passed Rose's cage and commented on how she looked almost identical tol the dog I had lost a year or so ago. I had been looking for a companion for Daisy, and after thinking about it all week I went back to meet Rose in person. I took a leash with me, so I think I knew what was about to happen. I sat on the floor and she came into the room and crawled into my lap and sighed. It was a good thing I had the leash. She had been adopted twice and had been returned to the vet's office both times. He made the comment that if it didn't work out, I could return her to him. I thought that was really strange, as he knows that when I adopt pets, I adopt them with the commitment to make it work. The trip from the shelter is a one-way trip as far as I am concerned. She looks so sweet and calm, doesn't she? The first day that I left her alone and went to work, she ate through the plastic pan in the bottom of her crate and then ate through the carpet, the padding, and right down to the concrete floor...right smack in the living room in front of the entertainment center. This was not so entertaining to me. The second day I left her crate on the floor in the kitchen with towels in the bottom of it (since we now had no plastic liner) and I came home to find her AND her crate in the dining room on the carpet, which now had a hole identical to the one in the living room. Who knew that a dog could walk across a kitchen and drag a wire crate wtih her? I knew I was not going to be able to pass this off as a phenomenal accident by a mutant rat to the apartment management staff, so I called the vet. He diagnosed separation anxiety and put her on some medication so that she could be calm when I left. The medication worked like a charm, and ironically, she is the one that I never have to worry about leaving out of some kind of confinement. This "free" dog cost me a small fortune when I moved out of the apartment.



This is Rudy...he came with registration papers that state he is a miniature dachshund. He weighs approximately 22 lbs. That is not miniature in my opinion. My vet just looked at him and said slowly "noooo, he's a standard". Well, he was supposed to be a miniature. My mother claimed to never want another dog after the beagle we had for 17 years died. That was in the mid-1980s. But about 10 years ago, she had a friend who had miniature doxies, and she was just enraptured. So for Christmas, in 2003, I decided to get her a dog. Before anyone says that you are never supposed to give pets as gifts, you are right. I had decided that I would take him if she refused. But I knew she needed some companionship. I found 3 dachshunds at shelters in the central Arkansas area, and all were already gone by the time I tried to get them. Well by that time, it was about 4 days before Christmas, and I was determined to get her a dachshund. I really believe strongly in rescuing animals from shelters, and it galled me to have to pay a breeder for this one. Knowing what I know now, I recognize that this guy was likely running a puppy mill, so maybe I inadvertently rescued him anyway. He stayed with me for 2-3 days before his debut at my mother's house, and I was in love with him by the time Christmas got here. As I walked in that evening with him in my arms, she looked at me in the dim light of the carport and said "What have you got there?" and when I held him out and said Merry Christmas she said "Suzanne, I TOLD you I don't want another...oh look! Come here!" She loved that dog and treated him like a baby. The first time she went out of town and I "dogsat" she told me that I had to hold him and rock him a little bit when he got ready to go to sleep. I thought like hell that would happen but that night when he sat at my feet and whimpered and looked up at me with his where-is-my-mamma-and-why-don't-you-love-me look...Sigh. My Mamma passed away in March 2005 from lung cancer and we had agreed that when she got too sick to deal with him that I would go ahead and take him home with me. He stayed with her throughout her illness and did not come home until the morning she died. He is a handful and she had trouble managing him at times (an elderly lady and a feisty puppy) but they loved each other very much. I joke and say that he is part of my inheritance. Why didn't she just leave me money and jewels?! LOL



And this is Bosco. He is of indeterminate heritage. We got Bosco from the Humane Society, who had categorized him as an Australian shepherd. O-kay. The vet said that he was predominately Lab. That fits. But from the time he came home, I had looked at pictures of pointers, and Bosco looked almost identical, to me at least. In surfing author's websites recently, I discovered romance writer Edith Layton holding Bosco in the photo on her website! See the resemblance for yourself at http://edithlayton.com/. So I wrote and asked her about her dog and what she thought it might be, and she wrote back and said that her dog, Daisy (how interesting since I have a Daisy too!) was also a rescue and was half pointer and half foxhound. I KNEW Bosco was a pointer! He can certainly push you to the point of frustration when he wants to, that's for sure...Many thanks for Ms Layton for her correspondence with me and her wonderful work with rescue organizations in her area. Bosco was the result of my then-boyfriend who wanted a dog of "his" since the other 3 were mine. He wanted a big dog who could go running with him and would wrestle in the yard with him. Something in Bosco called to something in him, and a week later, after agreeing that we were not going to get another dog right now, Bosco came home. I agreed ONLY because Bosco was going to be an outside dog. That was the agreement. So on the way to get Bosco, he asked if I was going to let him come inside in the cold. I agreed to that and said that there was no reason he couldn't sleep in the laundry room in the winter. Why the laundry room? Why not the kitchen? Because he's going to be an outside dog. The laundry room is heated and cooled. He'll be fine. Then he remembered as a child they had a dog that was chained outside and did not have a dog house to get in to get out of the weather, and he remembered standing at the door and crying because of the dog out in the rain. We can't let Bosco just stay out in the rain. I pointed out that we would have a large covered patio (we were getting ready to move) and we could put a large doghouse on it and the only reason Bosco would be out in the rain was if he didn't have sense to come in from it. So Bosco came home. The house where we were living at the time was old and there were several places in the backyard where Bosco could have knocked boards down and escaped. And it was 3 days before Christmas. What if he knocked something down and got out and something happened? He needs to stay in until we can get the backyard secure for him. Well, the long and short of it is that almost 2 years later Bosco has not yet spent one night outside. The relationship turned out to not be a match made in heaven after all, and in addition to some painful memories I am also left with Bosco (in all fairness, the then-boyfriend could not take Bosco with him and asked me to keep him since he knew I could give him a good home).

So that's the motley crew...who are currently demanding my attention. I seem to have fogotten that the world revolves around the needs and desires. Nothing like trying to stitch with "the pack" clamoring for attention! :)