Stories of One of Our Childhood Pets

I thought it might be fun to tell the story of one of our childhood pets, it doesn't have to be a first pet, and it doesn't have to be a cat.

My story is about Scamp, the dog my family owned for 14 years. When my sisters, brother and I were still really young my parents decided it was time for our family to have a small dog. One of my dad's friends from work had a female dog who had just had a litter of about 4 puppies.

The day after the puppies were born, our entire family paid a visit to my dad's friends house to see the puppies. They were part terrier and part chiua (Taco Bell dog) and extremely cute!!! We were told we could have the first choice from the litter and that very same night we choose the puppy who would become our future dog. We were so excited we could hardly wait for the puppy to be old enough to be brought home, so our family had to make several return visits to see the puppies.

We brought him home when he was about 8 weeks old, and poor Scamp cried all night for the first two nights. When he reached his full adult size he was about as big as a cat, and kind of nervous and yappy. This part isn't my fault. Scamp was never neutered and he was very aggressive toward other male dogs, especially if they came into his territory. When he got into fights it was usually with a larger dog like a German Shepard, but fortunately he was never seriously hurt.

Scamp usually stayed inside our fenced-in back yard but occassionally he got to run free. We also took him for a lot of walks, and it was always sooooo embarrassing when we stopped at every single tree and every single fire hydrant. My sister said that Scamp indicated twice that he wanted her to follow him. Both times he lead my sister to two different female dogs with litters of puppies that resembled him, and he seemed to realize he was the father.

Scamp brought our family a lot of joy for many years. I moved away from home, and one morning when Scamp was 14 1/2 years old, my parents found him completely paralyzed on one side and unable to recognize them. My dad and brother took Scamp to vet where they were told he had suffered a massive stroke and nothing more could be done. I was really sad when my dad called me with the bad news. Scamp was buried in my parent's back yard and he is still remembered and talked about by our family.

A picture of Scamp taken a few months before his death.

Lorie, Is that you in the picture with Scamp? How very pretty you are! I think it's so funny that Scamp wanted to show your sister what he had accomplished! Typical male. I'm sure you miss him.

This isn't really a pet story per se, but it is about an animal we had (very shortly!) while I was younger.

One early evening, my brother comes running into the house screaming "There's a CHICKEN running in the middle of the street!" I grew up in a very suburban city, between Washington DC and Baltimore MD, and there were no farms close. Of course, we didn't believe him, but when we went outside, we found he was right.

We chased that chicken up and down our street for a while. We finally cornered it in the bushes in front of a really grouchy neighbor's house. When he saw us, he came running out yelling at us. We told him that we were chicken wrangling, and he didn't believe us until he took a look. He got a lot nicer after that.

After we caught it, we took it home and fed it canned corn (I still have pictures of this). Our cat, needless to say was VERY interested in the chicken. We called animal control, but they were closed except for emergencies, and the dispatcher laughingly agreed that a stray chicken wasn't much of an emergency. The weather was nice, so we put it in the shed with some food and water. When animal control came the next day, they too had no idea where the chicken came from. We agreed that it was probably someone's dinner who had run free.

What a funny site to see a chicken running around in a suburban neighborhood! :LOL:

One of my very first pets (besides fish) was an anole. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a small lizard that changes colors. My twin sister and I had anywhere from 1-6 anoles at a time when we were growing up. I named mine Treetop. I don't remember how I picked that name. Well, they normally live about 1 year at the most in captivity, but mine lived over 3 years. He survived being lost on more than one occasion in my house. We always found him after a few days, and sometimes he'd come back to us with half of his tail chopped off. He always grew a new one though. Well one day we took our lizards outside...bad idea! And he ran up the tree in our front yard. I was devastated! I couldn't climb the tree to get him down, and this was in the fall, so I just assumed that he had died during the winter, or been eaten. Well the next spring we were outside spitting watermelon seeds near the bottom of that tree and all of a sudden I see him climbing down the trunk of the tree! I was shocked and extatic. So I hurried over and grabbed him before he could run back up. I still to this day don't know how he survived the winter in a tree! He died a few months later from old age. He was my very special pet.

Jeanie
That is me holding Scamp, but that's an old picture. My hair is a lot different now, but I haven't changed much otherwise.

My sister had an anole once too. I used to like to watch him when he was changing colors. And we even had pet Easter chicks, but unfortunately, Scamp ate them. It was a sad day when that happened!

Felicia was our dog when I was a teenager. She was a medium sized dog, black with a patch of white on her chest and white toes (not the whole paws, just her toes. It was so cute!) She was a product of a mutt mother, and a pedigree Stafordshire Terrier (pit bull) father. She was the most unique dog I have ever known.

My sister brought her home a couple months after we lost our weimeriener, Dutchess, to a stroke. My dad did not want another dog, period. Well, Sam brought home this little wiggly black puppy and dad was furious!

Felicia was a very smart dog, even at that age. The second night she was home, at her 2:00 poddy outing, she decided that she wanted to play. Mom wanted sleep so instead of putting Felicia back in her box where she would whine and keep the whole house awake, she took her to bed. Little Felicia romped a bit, and then found the perfect place to sleep - curled up by Dad's shoulder with her head across his neck. And that's how he found her the next morning, still all curled up with him. Dad decided that it wasn't the puppy's fault, and he shouldn't take it out on her. Dad and Felicia were best friends from that point on, but he didn't talk to my sister for over a month!

The story of Rastas

When I was about 12 years old, I woke up one morning to see a cage with 3 baby chicks inside. Mom had bought them for me as a surprise.
One was honey colored, so I named him Honey, one was brown, and one was black and white. I was thrilled. But then mom took them out to the garden with her while she weeded, thinking they would like the sunshine and could peck around at the bugs, etc....boy was this a dumb move...what was she thinking??? I was at school or I would have been out there watching them. Of course they wandered off aways, and one of our cats killed two of them. I was SOOOOO mad at her for taking them outside and not keeping an eye on them!
So all we had left was Honey.
As Honey got a little older, Dad kept calling him Rastas for some reason, so his name got changed to that. It just stuck.
He stayed inside the house until he got too big. He would only poop on the newspaper in the utility room, and so was allowed to run around the house some. (he wasn't full grown yet)
I have pictures of him roosting on top of the lampshade in the living room.
I can't believe mom let him run around in the house, because we had a nice house and she was so particular about things, but it was kinda cool.
But when he got bigger, we put him outside for good. He turned into a big HUGE Rhode Island Red rooster.
I could still pick him up and pet him, but he wouldn't let anyone else near him, and he started "flopping" my 5 year old nephew and anyone else he didn't care for...."Flopping" means running up and basically attacking them.
So we had to get rid of him...I was in tears. We gave him to some people a few miles away that had chickens, but they said he didn't stick around, and someone hit him on the highway a few miles from our house. I always figured he was trying to come back home.
I sure did love that chicken.

When I was 11 or 12, My mom, Stepdad and I were out driving somewhere in the middle of a snow storm at night. Visibility was poor and my mom hit what she thought was a chunk of snow in the road. Well snow doesn't make a thud so we turned back fearing it was an animal and it was dead. We got out of the car and the snow ball turned out to be a cat!!

The poor little thing was shaken and covered in snow but she appeared fine. We brought her to a nearby vet clinic and the doctor came in after hours to tend to her(The doctor who took care of her is now my boss). She stayed there over night and the next day we got the report that she was fine but had a minor concussion. Not knowing if she belonged to anyone or if she was a stray, my mom put an ad in the newspaper about the cat.

A week went by and no one claimed her so I begged my mom if we could keep her since we didn't have any cats. She said yes(My mom isn't hard to convince) and the next day I went to the clinic to pick her up. We named her Brandy and she was a beautiful long haired tiger stiped girl. She was still a baby not more than 6 months old.

She was a wonderful cat who went outside and eventually got pregnant. My mom didn't have much money to spay her and frankly my mom isn't the type to spay or neuter. Anyway she had 5 beautiful babies but she had killed one. The other four were very healthy and she took care of them well.

So a after her babies went to their homes we had her spayed. A few months later a couple of the neighborhood kids came knocking on the door and my mom answered. They asked her if that was our cat who was laying on the front lawn dead.... And there she was... Laying so lifelessly....

I burst into tears and I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't believe she was dead. She appeared perfectly healthy and she was so young, I just couldn't figure out what happened. The vet clinic said they could do a necropsie on her but I didn't want them to cut up her body. She was burried in our back yard.

I now work in the clinic were she used to go and I've flipped through her file just out of curiousity. As sad as it was a few weeks later I adopted a 8 month old kitten from an ad in the newspaper and named him Benny. Benny is now 7 years old and lives with my dad. I still think about her and what happened that day but I'll never know. I'm glad that she was a part of my life.

Jessica, I'm so glad you can still visit Benny. It's so traumatic when we lose a pet, especially when we are young. I'm sure you'll always remember Brandy.