I am not an animal person. It all started with my first pet, a goldfish named Goldie. My sister had a black fish, named Blackie. Goldie and Blackie lived together in a little tank on the kitchen counter. One morning, we came downstairs, looked in the tank, and Blackie was gone. He wasn’t flopping around on the counter; he wasn’t flopping around on the floor. He was gone, and Goldie had eaten him.
My next pet was a guinea pig named Coconut. Her name was Coconut because she was brown, and looked like a coconut. She also didn’t like me. Why? Because I took her out of her cage too soon after bringing her home from the pet store, and stunted her social growth. She wasn’t a people-guinea pig, didn’t like to cuddle.
I had various fish I claimed as my own in the big communal fish tank downstairs; Beauty the catfish ended up on the bottom on my birthday, a mere four days after I had called her mine. Meanwhile, my sister’s little fish, Killer, lived for years and years, even though he’d always been missing the greater part of all his fins.
So although my luck with pets was wearing pretty thin, at least Blackie lived on in Killer. And I’m happy to say that my next pets – Flip and Dip the African Dwarf frogs – lived happily in a tank in my room for years. I liked them best out of all my pets; they weren’t cannibals, and they couldn’t bite me. And they couldn’t leave their tank. This was a plus, because I have a fear of animals roaming loose through my house. The guinea pig made me uneasy, and the parakeet, Sidney, sent me into fits of hysterics. Whenever my mom would let him out of the cage and he’d go swooping in circles around the room, I’d plug my ears and run screaming upstairs.
But dogs were always my worst fear. I couldn’t go over to people’s houses unless they put their dogs away. I was sure they would eat me alive, bite me in half. I was sure they would lick me, and the prospect of that was too disgusting to think about. But that didn’t stop my parents. Two years ago, they decided to get a puppy. And almost immediately, Gidget scoped me out as the person to lick, to chase up and down the stairs and generally follow everywhere.
I am not an animal person, but I love my dog. Sure, she bites. She even bites her own foot, sometimes. But I taught her how to give “kissies.” She follows me everywhere. It’s kind of hard to live in constant fear of a fluffy puppy that loses her mind with happiness every time you come home. So Goldie, Coconut, Sidney – You’ll be happy to know that I finally got it right. I’ve even turned into the dog person I swore I’d never be.