...And The Hound
By Angela Arlia

(When we last left this column, we were left wondering why there was an ellipsis and a part one in the title.  But we were mostly concerned with an adorable puppy named Foxy Lady and her lively spirit, which has made a big impression on our heroine.  This month we dig deeper for the bone on our heroine’s pet love.  To re-read Part One, click here.)

here’s no disputing that a lively spirit is an attractive quality, but it can take a backseat sometimes.  Bonnette is my other dog.  She’s 12 lbs of jealousy of late. She was the one and only for a good eight years until a fuzzy puppy named Foxy Lady showed up.  Lately, Bonnette sits around whimpering in my lap while her sister and daddy play “catch the air ball.”  She wants to play too.  But instead of just adding herself to the fun, she zips in and steals the ball and runs under the desk or table, thereby making her sister run after her.  As Foxy paws at Bonnette to try to get the ball, Bonnette insists on growling, which she thinks is scary—but it’s not. It’s funny to hear a little white-and-black dog pretend to be a car stalling to start.
		Bonnette is spunky.  When she wants something, she will do everything to get it—like, stealing her sister’s bone, for example.  Now, I give each of the dogs a bone most nights so that they can go to sleep. The girls are always happy to have their bones handed to them. They chew on them as voraciously as if they have never seen bones before.  Inevitably, each one will try to get the other’s bone somehow.  Foxy tends to wait until either my hubby or I begin to play with Bonnette. Then she sneaks over with an enormous doggy smile on her face and she steals Bonnette’s bone.  This usually makes Bonnette bark when she returns to the spot where she last left the bone and discovers that it’s missing.  We ignore her and she gets even
with her sister.  She waits until Foxy follows us to the kitchen or bathroom, and then she steps in red-pawed and takes back her bone.  I told you she was spunky.             I got Bonnette from a dog shelter when she was just a puppy. Her mother, who was probably no bigger than Bonnette is now, had 11 puppies.  Yes, 11 puppies.  I still get faint thinking about it.  The family that owned Bonnette’s mom couldn’t keep all those puppies, so they gave them to the shelter.  When I first saw them, they were all tiny and spotted in a big crib, fighting with one another, on top of a moving blanket.  A moving blanket?  How was it moving?  As I looked a little closer, out of the side popped a little puppy with the blanket around her face just like an Easter bonnet (hence, part of how she got her name).  This was the puppy and I was in-love!  Our eyes connected, angels danced in heaven, string music played in my ear and a puppy was scratching at the side of the crib.  It was meant to be.  I adopted her that night.  When she’d had all her shots and I could take her home, the shelter workers were cute enough to put a red bow around her neck.  She was the best Christmas present I ever got myself.             The first few years, Bonnette was like the energizer bunny. She just kept going and going.  She would zip around the apartment for 20 minutes at a time in bursts of 0-to-60-in-1.2-seconds-type energy.  Mostly I just stayed out of her way.  She enjoyed saying hi to most of the delivery men, especially the pizza guy (yes, she is an Italian-American dog), and decided early on that she didn’t like children. They were always running towards her and she didn’t understand why.  They were always surprising her, or maybe it was the disproportioned bodies that freaked her out.             I remember that when my mother learned I’d gotten a dog, she was livid.  My dad, on the other hand, made a new friend almost instantaneously.  (Guess who I take after?)  As the years have gone by, my mom has called Bonnette “beautiful,” “precious,” “treasure,” “joy,” and the like, and basically treats Bonnette better than she’s ever treated my sister or me.  She often goes to the store with the sole purpose of getting chicken for Bonnette.
		Before Foxy joined the family, my dad would often come over before his dinner asking for “Bella” (“beautiful” in Italian).  My hubby would say “Angie’s not home yet,” to which my dad would reply, “Not Angie, Bonnette!”  I probably should feel slighted by this, but I honestly don’t mind.  As I always say to my sister, I don’t mind if my parents love my dogs more than me.  I happen to like my dogs more than them, so it’s about even.  My sister feels the same way I do.             Bonnette was a big deciding factor in my decision to marry my husband.  If she liked him, he was golden. The first time he came to visit, Bonnette sniffed him
but she didn’t go to him immediately.  Yet, she also didn’t show any outward aggression, which I thought was a good sign. So I left the two of them together for a few minutes while I went into another room.  When I returned, there they were, sitting next to each other, and Bonnette was licking him and he was petting her.  She had given me the approval:  two paws up.             Now my husband and Bonnette are very close.  Many mornings when he leaves to take Foxy for a walk, she whimpers and waits at the door for their return.             The first few weeks with both Foxy and Bonnette, I freaked out because I was worried that they wouldn’t get along.  And the constant bickering that was going on when Foxy tapped her sister made me scared that they would get into a vicious dog fight when I wasn’t around.  But after some time, I realized that they are just dog versions of my parents.  They fight and irritate each other, but that means they love each other.  And I often catch them giving each other kisses when they think we aren’t looking.  (My parents, in case you’re wondering, have moved far past this stage.)  Every time I see them doing that, I fall in-love with both of them all over again.