Considering the subject, this may be a bad choice of words, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. She got our first dog within a month or two of our getting married, but it took me over eleven years to convince W to have children. D17 is our only natural child. W’s first words after the birth were, “What color is her hair?”. The second sentence out of her mouth was, “I hope you like this one, because we’re never doing this again.” At that time, we had three dogs and a cat.
Six and a half years later, mostly because D(then)6 kept begging for a sister, W relented and we adopted a three year-old girl from Romania. Our other pseudo-daughter, D20, is really an exchange student from Moldova that we had for the 2002-2003 school year - her senior year. We just loved her so much that we decided to keep her. It wasn’t easy, but we managed to get all of the paperwork through and we’re putting her through college in the U.S. She just started her third year of college.
The animal population explosion took place when we finally moved out of town a couple of years ago. We had four dogs and two cats when we moved, but once we had acreage and no city ordinances limiting the number of dogs (an ordinance she was already exceeding), there was no holding her back.
So the animal thing started before the kids and has been limited only by space. Small apartment: one dog. Small house: two dogs and a cat. A little bit bigger house with a little bit bigger yard: three dogs and a cat. A really big house with an acre and a half back yard: four or five dogs and anywhere from two to four cats. And now, out in the country with acreage and a barn we’ve converted to kennels: who knows – the list’s still growing.
