If you've been reading a long time, you know that I have experienced some frustrations with my pets. I have one sweet cat and one rather mean cat, and both of them are very, very naughty. Their main vice is stealing food--sometimes right off our plates--and they have many other terrible habits, like clawing the furniture and occasionally even peeing on piles of laundry... which may or may have been lying on my bed for days waiting to be folded.
Sometime last spring, Allyson asked if I might think about getting a dog. My first response was that we already had two pets too many, and my second was that I really am not a dog person. But she said having a dog at my house would really make her happy, so I promised to think about the idea. We prayed about it, and I promptly forgot all about it.
In April, Allyson's former stepsister Morgan asked if we could keep Olive for a couple of weeks while she looked for another home. I agreed readily, thinking it would be a good chance to try out having a dog with no strings attached, and if it didn't work out, we could put the whole thing behind us.
Olive had been Allyson's dog, too, at her dad's house. They'd decided to get a puppy after Lola passed away, and they chose Olive because she looked a lot like her. (Lola had been my dog, too, until shortly after the divorce.) If you've been reading a very long time, you may remember that my fondness for Lola was tempered with aggravation over her perpetual mischief, such as the time she ate my favorite cloth diaper with the duckies on it right off the clothesline or the time she murdered my tomato plants. So I was surprised at the surge of tenderness I felt when I first met Olive. She resembles Lola so much that I often accidentally call her by that name.
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| Lola on Left, Olive on Right |
