Four-Legged Friends (Holly Schindler)

Growing up, I always had one. My parents had two cats when I was born, and one of them (Pete) basically adopted me when they brought me home. We were always together. I mean...always. Under shade trees reading or curled up together on the couch. He used to sit on my textbooks when I was doing schoolwork at the kitchen table, this annoyed look on his face like, "You know you're never going to actually need that. Now PAY ATTENTION TO ME."

When I was five (and we still had the cats), we also got a Maltese. Winnie. Well, she was the dog of my childhood, so her full name was Winnie D. Pooch. 

Yeah. I know. That's her next to our ancient old camper during some summer trip to the lake. Probably around '87 or so. Dog of the '80s. Wonder what she thought of the fashion and the music. 

Anyway, she was always with us, as the picture suggests. A traveler supreme. She went along with us to the Gulf one summer, when I was in high school. (Our animals all lived to be ancient, with the exception of the last one. I mean late teens, nearly 20. Winnie died when I was in grad school. I was 23. She was 17.)

I remember when I was little (even before we got Winnie), Mom was talking to me about why people needed to be kind to animals. "They're always the same," she said. "People have moods and get mad and upset and storm around, but animals are always the same." 

I think she was definitely onto something there. Our animals really are a constant. In some cases, for a pretty significant chunk of our lives. I got Winnie when I was in kindergarten. She was there when I was a little girl on training wheels. She was there when I started wearing makeup. She was inside the house when my first boyfriend kissed me goodnight on the porch. She was there when I came home from my college commencement. And, yes, through it all, she was always just her. Lover of car trips and peanut butter cookies. Not that we told the vet about the last one. 

Maybe that's why they make such great friends for our MG characters. Because in a time of upheaval, you have to have a constant. Something that is always reliable and dependable. 

And what better constant than a four-legged one?

~

Holly Schindler is the author of the MG The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky