TOD
In my earliest years we had a dog whose name I think was "Suzie", who I recall had puppies while she was with us and they got given to new homes. I was very young and I remember just about that much and no more. This was in Columbus, and one day the family doctor told us that the reason I was going through so many colds or allergy spells was from the dog hair, and we reluctantly gave Suzie to a new home and didn't have pets for a while.
After we'd moved and had been living in Florida for a couple of years, we thought that climate might be more conducive to having a dog again, and we adopted "Babe". That's who I consider my first real pet, and she was a wonderful family dog and companion. She was with us for some 7 or 8 years, from my junior high and high school years through my family's move back to Cincinnati while I was in school in Cleveland. On my visits home, she was always happier to see me than I could ever have imagined. She later developed a tumor that was giving her problems, and it was inoperable, and one night they called and told me that they'd had to say goodbye to her.
They eventually got another dog, but that was it for me until I'd moved to Connecticut and adopted my first cats from North Shore Animal League in 1990. And it's been cats ever since.
