My Dog

Jojo. She's pretty melencholy in this picture, huh?

This week I want to talk about my dog, JoJo. She is the namesake for this blog, and is the only pet dog that I have ever had. Even though I have a cat and some fish, JoJo is the only pet that I really connect to. I love to walk her, pet her, take her to the park. She has a wonderful, kind and gentle personallity. I really love her, (and this is really sappy). I wonder how many peole have had a dog that they have connected with like I have with JoJo. There is, however, one problem. You have never smelled something so horrible as one of her *ahem* farts. They are, as many would put it "silent but horribly violent."

I want to tell the story of how my family came to own JoJo. We didn't, unfortunately, raise her from a puppy (I bet she would have been pretty cute). We got her when she was about 2 years old. It was 5 years ago (post script: that makes her 49 in dog years).  It was back when we had an old, green Buick Le Sabre. I only mention this because it was a huge part of my child hood, and because it was bright, metallic green. For some reason, this sticks out in my mind. Anyway, it was a cool, but sunny mid-October day. The sky was very blue, and cloudless. We were driving along, my mom following the directions of a newspaper clipping, cut out of the classifieds. It said something like "Dog for Sale, Mixed Breed, young (2 yrs), excited and happy, five dollars." I had read the clipping many times over, and still couldn't believe it. Five dollers! For a dog! Was she defective or something?

We arrived at the house. It was a nice, quiet, blue 2 story split duplex, as my dad would call it (he's an appraiser, he determines the value of people's houses and property). As soon as we pulled up, I heard the barking, and a small, squat, black dog ran from around behind the yard. A young kid ran screaming after her, and a mom walked out the front door, carrying a leash. "So, you're the people who want to buy Pepper?" (we later changed her name, my dad didn't like "Pepper"). "Yep" my mom said. "So, why did you decide to sell her?" "Well, we moved to this house, and the community rules are that you can't have an indoor dog, and Pepper just isn't an outdoor dog."

Thus is the sad story of Jo. Her previous family loved her dearly, put when they moved, they had to put her outside. JoJo really don't like the outside. So, they put an add in the newspaper to try and get her a better home. She wasn't defective, the family wanted to give her away for free, but the paper forced them to ask at least five dollers. And she became ours.