There hasn't been a day in my life that I haven't had a loving pet in my life. The love I have for my pets is stronger and more unyielding than any other relationship than I have had in my life. I learned to walk alongside my black-lab mutt of a dog named Mackey. She was the sweetest and most loyal dog that anyone could ever ask for. Mackey was there for the first sixteen years of my life and is present in all of my childhood memories. My parents didn't have the heart to put Mackey down, and she rode in the car with my mom every single day to work, even when her legs started to fail her and she had to be lifted up onto the seat and back out again. She lived until she was eighteen years old, 126 in dog years. The strongest dog there ever was.
While Mackey roamed the house, there were many other friendly pets that habited the Herrick household. Shannon, the oldest, was the first to be permitted to get a pet hampster. My dad, being allergic to almost every kind of pet besides dogs, was not too pleased. His attitude only worsened when, a few weeks later, we learned that Shannon had purchased a pregnant hampster and there were six more, not so furry friends in her hampster's cage. This is where my hampster-obsessed craze began. I was banned from entering Shannon's room and playing with the babies, but this could never stop me. I would creep in and play with them where they were hidden, in the small closet at the back of her room. Looking back on this I probably should have listened to mom, since mother hampsters are prone to killing their babies that smell like humans, but as far as I recall, things turned out alright.
Not long after, mom caved and got me my first hampster, Lucy. Lucy and I were immediately best friends. I played with her every day and watched her race around and run into walls in her clear-globe ball. Lucy was a freakishly smart hampster. She soon learned how to escape her cage by biting through the mesh cover. Mom would make me say a pray to St. Anthony of lost things and she'd always come back, bribed by food and water. One time she worked her way into the wall of my house and down from the second level to the first. My dad heard her scratching through the wall of our downstairs bathroom and had to hammer a whole in the wall to get her out. Once again, he wasn't too happy with my little rodent.
After Lucy passed away came Sid, who liked to chew on toys so she was named after the evil kid from Toy Story. Then there was Milli, named so because I got her the year of the Millenium (very creative, I know). Milli was a beautiful little dwarf hampster. After a couple months of having her, she developed a tumor on her ear. After it grew at an alarming speed, my dad took my little two inch pet to the vet. They had to remove her tumor and she "died" on the operating table. The vet shocked her little heart back to life with her two fingers and she was with me for many months after. Even though the hampsters gave dad a hard time, he put up with quite alot of the nonsense that came along with them.
My current best friend moved into the Herrick household the last year that Mackey was around. Her name is Darby, named after a city in England called Darby. Darby is one of the puppies of my nanny Priscilla's dog, so she was named after Priscilla's hometown. Darby was the naughtiest puppy ever and bit holes in all my clothes. As soon as Mackey passed away, Darby started to show her true colors and is now the biggest sweetheart you'll ever meet. My parents like to say that a little bit of Mackey rubbed off on her. Darby is one of the main reasons I come home from college and we spend hours lounging and watching tv together, which are two of our favorite things to do.
When Mackey was 6, Abby, another yellow lab, became a visitor in our house because my uncle was going through a change in living situations and needed to find her a temporary home. Now nine years later, Abby is still living with us and uncle Jimmy has a new puppy, so apparently she's here to stay. She may be an incredibly stinky dog, but she's grown on us all. You can find her on youtube as Abby the Amazing Rock hound because she dives up to five feet down in the water to get rocks, which has caused her lack of teeth.
I believe that everyone should have pets in their life. They have been such an important and loving part of my childhood. Every time I'm going through a hard time, I know I always have my dog's chubby fur to cuddle up next to. I'm sure that there will always be a dog living with me throughout my life and I won't have it any other way.
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