Mika the Terrible

After we got back from our beach hopping adventures, I started hounding Michael to let us get a dog. His criteria for years had been that I get a job in Wake County, and since I had finally met that criteria, I figured we'd better hurry up and get a dog before I started work. After a couple of weeks of scouring the websites of all of the animal shelters in the area, I came across this dark chocolate pit bull mix named Mika, and I figured it was fate. (If Michael and I had ever had a girl baby, we'd planned to name her Mika.)




For the first few days after she came home with us, she was an angel. Then I took her to dog training classes for the first time, and she turned into a terror. She did not like the trainer's dog and spent the whole time growling and barking at him. Truth be told, she didn't like being around any dogs; she couldn't understand why we wanted her to sit quietly and behave when there were other dogs to play with.

Then she started testing the boundaries at home, nipping at the boys and running in crazy circles while on a leash (which is not fun for the person holding the leash!). Finally, I was getting really worried about having her around the kids - not because she was mean but because she was too excited and would lose control. I wanted to take her back to the shelter, but Michael convinced me to hire a dog behavior specialist, who came to our house, observed her, and gave us some tips. Mostly, she just put my mind at ease. We finished up the dog training classes, got Mika somewhat under control, and we're all very happy to have Mika in our home now. Even Michael (even if he says he just tolerates her).





One day, a neighbor's dog wandered into our yard, and Mika thought she'd died and gone to doggie heaven.

New Pet

Eli brought home the class pet for the summer: a little grey hamster named Smokey. When I told my mom, she said, "Oh, no. Why????"

We had a series of hamsters as pets when I was a kid, and they always lost their lives tragically. Many, many times, our hamsters would escape their cages in the middle of the night, and we would find them later in the sump pump. Once, some little kid, the child of some guests my parents had over for dinner, squeezed my hamster to death (or maybe he threw him? I can't quite remember). One very terrible time, we made the mistake of putting two hamsters in the same cage, and one ate the other.

It's understandable that my mom is no longer fond of hamsters, but so far Smokey has survived his stay with us and only needs to stay alive for three more weeks before we return him to his rightful owner.

Not surprisingly, considering that he's the pet in a classroom of 25 kids, Smokey is not fond of people. He doesn't like to be picked up or held...or touched. He does like to bite. We made it our mission to acclimate him to humans this summer, but although he has made progress, I doubt he'll ever get to the point that he likes to be held. He has the personality of a really old dog...he's not mean; he just wants to be left alone.


Here's a little side story about pets from my childhood: At some point in my later elementary school years, a friend and I did a school project involving three mice. I have absolutely zero memory of the school project, but I do remember the mice because my friend took one home as a pet and I took the other two. Their names were Donny and Joseph; my friend's mouse was named Jordan. ❤ NKOTB ❤

Mice may not be as cute as hamsters, but they do make pretty fun pets. Sadly, I think my mice may have lost their lives in the sump pump.