You can love your pet...

…just don’t love your pet. Did anyone else see this? http://www.lemondrop.com/2009/07/08/woman-marries-her-dog-seriously/ Apparently a woman in Ghana named Emily Mabou believes she found the love of her life in her pug and decided to make it legal. Well, okay. I bring this up because A) it’s weird, and B) I’ve been accused by my husband more than once of loving my dog more than him. I think he’s joking. I may love Max, but I certainly don’t love Max. Which brings me to another topic. Does anyone out there play favorites with their pets? Let me introduce you to my dogs:



My husband and I have two Shih Tzu’s who we somewhat jokingly call Max the Great and Milo the Terrible. My friends tease me, saying that Milo KNOWS we love him less and that’s why he’s so bad. We’ve had Max for three and a half years, and Milo for about one and a half. We don’t have children, so we dote on our dogs. Max was the first to steal our hearts and he is truly the best dog I’ve ever known. He was easy to train, he’s well behaved, he never barks, he’s as sweet as he can be, he’s good with kids, and he’s just an extremely easy pet to have. Milo, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. He barks, he whines, he moans, he eats dryer sheets. He chases Max mercilessly whenever they’re in the room together. He nips at hands and licks toes. He is also the most stubborn animal I have ever met. We’ve tried training him, just as we trained Max, and it’s clear that he knows exactly what you’re asking him to do, he has just decided he’s not going to do it. This is made evident by the fact that holding a treat in your hand magically clears up his confusion. “Oh, I’m sorry, you asked me to sit? No problem.”

So Milo gets a bad rap. But the thing about him is that he’s just so infuriatingly lovable. If he’s out and Max is put up, Milo will follow you everywhere you go and quietly sit and look at you until you move again. And he’s just about the snuggliest dog there ever was. He’s floppy and cute and he likes to be picked up and carried around. And surprisingly enough, he’s a pretty good little watchdog. If he hears voices outside, or something out of the ordinary, he’ll immediately bark with a bark he only uses for that situation, which is pretty handy. I hold out hope that all the drama is just part of his puppy phase and he’ll eventually grow out of it completely. But in the meantime, we’ve grown to love him for the insane little guy that he is.

So to Mrs. Mabou, (assuming she kept her maiden name) I understand loving your dog, I really do. I mean, hey, I just wrote a really long blog post about how much I love my dogs and why. I’m a crazy dog person – I get it. But even I have to draw the line somewhere waaay before marriage.