PETS BH96F~30 USA

Paragraph attached. [I had to print it, my handwriting is illegible.]

(The dogs are actually very bouncing, but I had to shoot them when in couch potato mode else they would just have been nauseating double blurs in the frame.)

Photos difficult to pose since animals were either 1) too active to shoot or 2) floppy down on their visually uninteresting dog beds. I wanted to pose them with flowers and a rare edition of the Bard (to show how cultured I am) but they wouldn't cooperate.

"Gone to the Dogs" or "The Best Things in Life Aren't Free"

"Happiness," wrote Freud, "is the delayed gratification of childhood wishes." "That is why wealth brings so little happiness," he added. "For riches are not a childhood wish."

The Rottweiller cost $1500 as a pup, the Bichon $1200. I pay the dogwalker $600 each month to take them to the park for a mid-day romp. Add another few hundred a month for baby-sitting when I take a quick trip & that's just under ten grand a year for daycare. Throw in another two thousand for vets (if nothing is seriously wrong) and toys, a few thousand for food (we won't even count the cost of the $5 million dollar Rottie rider on my insurance policy); the $75 a month grooming bill for the Bichon and $150 an hour charged by Bash, the dogtrainer, who straightens the Rottie out whenever she comes too close to mauling the Fedex man. I can't face adding all this up. Let's just call it north of $15,000 a year in after-tax dollars for the pleasure of letting the furry darlings insure my home will always be a mess & that I can never again unfold the Pratesi sheets. I couldn't bear to see them punctured with their doggy fingernails. But time is really the hugh cost. I have none, and so must steal from sleep the hour it takes me to give the Rottie her mile in the morning & mile walk at night. Weekends, there's our 2 hour trot through Central Park at 6:00 A.M. Neither rain, sleet, nor conditions requiring me to wear two pairs of gloves keeps us from going as far as we can till we're exhausted. Then if I'm good, the Rottie rewards me with a big slurpy kiss across the face when I hail us a cab home.

My friends think I'm insane. If I had a nickel for every time the last man I wouldn't marry said, "If you loved me half as much as you love those dogs...," I would be able to buy even more squeaky toys than the dozens currently strewn about my apartment.

But would I be happier if I had all the time & money back? Oh no! My puppy pals are priceless. Every time I walk in the door they jump for joy like kids on Christmas. But unlike kids, they will never grow up. Welcome to Never, Nerverland.