How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

"Everyone's pet is the most outstanding. This begets mutual blindness."  Jean Cocteau.  Jean Cocteau was a celebrated novelist, playwright, director, poet, essayist, painter, and actor and he owned a dog.  I'm not sure why he felt that the love for an pet promoted mutual blindness but he clearly understood the incredible connection that many of us feel for the pets in our lives. 

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I had cats, I adored my cats.  Unfortunately the digital age had not yet arrived during the time they 'owned' me.  But I have photo albums of my cats, my cats with my children growing up, and my cats finding the most impossible places to lie down in.  They captured my heart.  They were affectionate and followed me around like dogs do.  My last cat, a Siamese named "Tigger" because she bounced around like Tigger in Winnie the Pooh would talk to me and scold me if I left her home alone too long.  

Dunkie runs away with the Agility Cone

Now I have dogs, 2 Tibetan Terriers who are the love of my life.  They are a joy to be around, always happy, ever present.  Several years ago, I started blogging about my first Tibetan Terrier named Duncan, aka Wigglebutt Duncan.  He was so fascinating to me that I blogged fairly regularly about him and his antics http://wigglebuttduncan.blogspot.com/2009/10/tales-of-wigglebutt-duncan-tibetan.html.  And then a year ago, we got Isadora Duncan, aka Destructo-girl, aka Izzy Dunk who is now a year old and not slowing down one bit.  Each of them is a hoot alone, together, they are amusement personified.  Just look at this picture taken when we were at Camp Dogwood 'learning' about agility!  The cone was far more interesting to Dunk than anything else.  

Izzy as a puppy

So let me count the ways I love them:  1)  I buy them the jumbo bully sticks to chew on (they are expensive); 2) I feed them frozen raw food to try to give them the most natural nutrition (also expensive); 3) I keep them in a fairly long cut, so I purchased a grooming table, a cage dryer, and two standing dryers, along with professional mat-splitters, rotating detangler combs, and special shampoos and conditioners that you actually need to look for online because pet stores do not typically carry them; 4) we have 2 crates in our family room and 2 crates in our bedroom .... we also have a stroller crate where we can put both of them in and a ventilated crate that fits both of them and each has a portable crate; 5)  I bathe them in our big tub in our bathroom that we don't use where they get bath doggy massage in addition to being washed; 6) I now have a digital SLR camera with a fairly fast shutter speed that I bring with me almost everywhere to "capture the moments"; and then 7) I have those moments made into FOREVER moments by creating the removable stickers from www.bumperpet.com.  Just because I love them.  Look at the picture below.  That's the back of my car.  And I must admit, every time I walk up to my car and look at those stickers, I get this warm feeling in my heart.  You can experience forever moments similar to mine by having your pet on your car or your locker or computer or refrigerator or ... wherever.  

Just some of the possibilities; they are endless

So here's the deal for people who are reading this post.  If I receive a minimum 50 comments from readers out there who tell me in a bit of detail how they uniquely love their pets, I will select 2 comments that I feel are most related to the notion of 'forever love' and each of the two selected will receive a gift certificate so that they can create their own memory of mutual adoration we all feel for our pets.  I can't wait for this adventure to begin.