Do you remember?

I was sitting at work thinking of my two lost little ones. I have to do that so I can keep them fresh in my memory. But one thing that kept flashing into my mind was the first day that I got them.

I got Taterbug about two weeks after we lost our albino chihuahua, Caesar in the summer of 1997. Caesar was killed by a male Dalmatian after he went sniffing a female Dalmatians rear end. Kind of an inglorious way to go, but that was my little Caesar. We grieved and cried for about two weeks when my wife told me of a woman that had a littler of chihuahua pups with no papers. Seems like her and her soon-to-be ex husband were divorcing. One owned the Mama and one owned the Daddy do and neither would provide the other with papers to make them officially "chihuahua's". Reluctantly, I agreed to go look at them. When I got there, there were only 4 pups left. And the scrawniest, shyest, one of them all crawled towards me and looked up at me. It was love at first sight. That was my "Taterbug". I gave the lady $100.00 for her and scooped Taterbug up and put her in my shirt pocket. She was so small that you could not even tell that I had anything in my pocket. Being brindle, she looked just like a little tiger cub kitten. As a matter of fact, people would ask me if she was a kitten. She wasn't she was a chihuahua. I took her home and surprised my kids with her. She literally grew up with them. I miss that old girl. She lived through a lot of good times and bad times with us. I know she is in Heaven now, no longer old, but young and healthy.

CoCo was a little different story. Our next door neighbor had CoCo and his little half-sister, a silky tzu, Lexi, living on her back deck. It was about a 5x10 area with no shelter from the sun, rain, cold, or whatever the weather was doing. And their hair was so matted they were miserable. Everytime we came home my wife would step over and say "Hello" to them. They were a stinky little mass of hair. For those that have had shih-tzu's and silky tzu's, you know how quickly that can happen. My wife kept saying she was going to get those dogs from our neighbor. Anyway, one day I come home from work and she had done it. She talked the lady into giving us both dogs. My wife was on the back porch with clippers shaving them down as best she could. When she finished I told her, "Those dogs look like fire victims". It DID make them more comfortable. My wife said the woman eagerly agreed to give them to us because, in her words, "They stink and they eat poopoo". I fell head over heels in love with them from the first day. CoCo had such a comical personality. He was always grinning. He was hard to housetrain though. What we did was buy Pampers diapers and alter them to fit him, until he got the hang of it. He was so embarassed by the diapers. I think my other dogs laughed at him. He eventually got the hang of it and didn't peepee anymore in the house. I love that little smiling boy so much. I wish he was still here with us.