Author: Mark Alexander

I was raised with dogs, but for nearly all my adult life I never really thought of myself as a dog person. My first non-aquatic pet was a cat I’d kidnapped from my tweeked out ex (who was planning on jetting off for Christmas and just leaving her outside for a week because he couldn’t find her before heading to the airport). Sasha ended up becoming my charge because there was no way I was going to give her back to him since he obviously didn’t give a shit about her.

I became deathly allergic to the little furball about three months after she moved in, but that didn’t dissuade me from continuing to love and care for her for several more years. That’s why they make inhalers, right?

She ended up living with me until she went to live with my mom when I—for a man—moved into an apartment that forbade pets. One of the dumbest things I’d ever done.

Sasha was my last mammalian pet until we rescued Sammy in 2014. I have to admit it was love at first sight. When we took in Ben’s mom’s one-eyed Shitzu about a year later, I confess I was completely smitten with both of them and in the intervening years definitely became a dog person—to the point that now when I see people with their dogs out an about I give out an involuntary, “Awww! So cute!”

I shudder to think of how many photos Ben has of me, passed out in my chair, snoring loudly, with one or both of them in my lap…

Funny how life takes you in directions you’d never expect.