My adopted animals...Chptr 1

I realized I never really told the story of how we ended up with our animals....

I used to have a long-haired chihuahua named Skittles my sister gave to me. She was born April 2003. She was long-hair at birth, but lost all her hair by the time she was 1. She never weighed more than 3.5 lbs so she was a definitely a runt! We called her "monkey dog"......

When I decided to go back to school that fall, I wanted to get her a friend to keep her company. Much to Kodo's dad disapproval, I went off to the OC Shelter. That's where I found Kodo. He was covered in fleas and was found roaming with another male chi. I tried to adopt the both of them, but the other chi was too aggressive and he had to be euthanized. I brought Kodo home and he and Skittles got along great! He struggled with humans though. Kodo immediately bonded with myself and his dad, but he was really aggressive with everyone else.

In case you are wondering, the name Kodo was inspired from the movie Beastmaster. You gotta love 1982 Marc Singer. Dar had two ferret friends named Kodo & Podo. I always knew I wanted to give an animal at least one of those names.

The first year with Kodo was difficult, he growled and snapped at people a lot and never seemed comfortable in his environment. We just kept putting him in situations where he was required to deal with other animals and humans in the hopes he would just get over it. The only time that we would have to muzzle him is when kids came over. I would feel so bad about it that I stopped muzzling him and we would keep him around us until he snapped or growled and then we would punish him by putting him in "time out". Now we don't even have to muzzle him when he goes to the vet. Five years later and he is a changed dog!

Skittles passed away in April 2005. Kodo's dad and I struggled a bit with her loss, as did Kodo. He became a maniac! Spoiled and selfish, he began to do whatever, whenever, and we knew it had to stop. We decided that we would adopt another dog to help regulate his behavior.

For those of you that know me, I will take any old dog off the street and love it. Matt is a little more particular about his animals.....

Chapter 2...the story of how we adopted Lola....