What Are Your Pet Peeves with Your Pets?
Blogger, author and Georgia Writers Association President, Cherie Miller, joined me to talk about her entertaining and popular blog, Pet Peeves. During the podcast, we talked about how she got started with blogging, the types of articles and advice that are featured on her blog and how having a Master’s degree in Professional Writing has helped her with being the author of this blog. She also shared one of her pet peeves that she has with one of her dogs. If you have a pet peeve with one of your pets, you’ll definitely want to listen to this episode to find out more about the Pet Peeves blog.
BIO:
Home is Where the Herd Is
My first foray into pet mommyhood began quite naively. Our neighbors invited us over for dinner. I didn’t find out until we walked in their door, that this family had P-E-T-S! Can you believe I entered that house with three impressionable boys? I must have lost my mind, since I really can?t explain why we returned home with three mouse babies.
Mice can actually be darling little creatures. For about two months. After that they cannonball through puberty directly into the mommy-track. When ours produced their first litter, I called my friends in a panic since babies of any kind are the last thing a parent needs to deal with. They calmly informed me that pet shops purchase mice. I “forgot” to tell my boys that their precious baby mice were snake fodder. They innocently thought that the nice man at the pet store was going to find all of our baby mice new homes just as nice as ours.
I soon discovered that three little mice produce hundreds?count ?em, hundreds?of offspring a year. Our house soon took on all the aspects of a mousy maternity ward. One particular day will live in mouse infamy. My 2-year-old son took about twenty mouse babies out of their cage to play. I played hide and seek double-time through the living room to recover all of them before our family cat practiced pet cannibalism. In record time I had our mousy family in the car to visit that nice man.
While we were at the store disposing of the mice, my kids talked me into a replacement pet. That?s when we started the fish and lizard stage of our family life. I thought it was a good deal when I spied the aquarium kit. ?Why not?? I reasoned. Unfortunately, I soon discovered all of the reasons why?algae, algae, algae and the tank overflowing. The lizard didn?t fare any better.
Did you know that lizards have to be sprayed with water—every day? I didn?t either, until my son clutched the pet box in his hot little hand. Mentally I added ?mist lizard? to my overwhelming daily ?To Do? list. I swear it was not my fault that the lizard didn?t make it. It must have been that cannibalistic cat.
Unfortunately, since females are sadly underrepresented in our family, our home has had a procession of squeaky, slimy, cold and scaly pets. They usually have weird eating habits like regularly chomping down live bugs. Of course, the ?food? needs to live in a little container in my refrigerator next to my yogurt.
MY new life experience is to avoid pet stores like the plague. There is, however, one teensy little thing that tugs at my heart. Every boy needs a doggy best friend, right? Do dogs qualify as a medical tax deduction?