Dog Day Afternoon

Long before I was born my father had a collection of various porcelain dogs. That may sound like an odd thing for a man to collect, but my dad was a pack rat by nature (See, I came by that trait honorably) and he always loved dogs. So this collection made perfect sense to me. I think that he had inherited some of them from my grandmother and I'm sure the rest he received as gifts. There were mama dogs that had matching pups by their sides, dogs that were linked together with thin chains starting with the largest and then graduating down in size. Poodles, Scotties, Terriers...all kinds of dogs, years and years worth of dogs. At least that's what I have been told, for you see I never actually saw any of them.

The story is that my oldest brother loaded the whole collection into a cardboard box without permission and took them to school for show and tell. The dogs made it all the way to school, lasted throughout the day there, survived the walk home from school, only to be accidentally dropped and smashed to oblivion right at the doorstep as my brother entered. AAUGHH!!! It was one of those days that lives on in family infamy, you know one of those events that gets replayed for the next forty years. And here I am, bringing up the subject again...

I'm telling you this essentially because I too love collecting little "doggities." I guess it's in the genes. To be in my collection dogs must meet this criteria: They have to be quirky...
They have to be cute...
They have to be unique...
They have to be lovable.

I guess requiring them to be shatterproof might be unrealistic.