We’ve been in a nostalgic mood these last few weeks, what with the holidays and all.
We asked friends and readers from across the continent to tell us about their first pet.
Here are some of the stories they shared with us:
Leslie McGavin Clifton (Florida) I was perhaps five years old when I showed up with Tramp, as we named him, and said, “Mom, look what I found.” He was a stray and had actually been wounded with a pellet gun. My mom being your original bleeding heart, Tramp was taken to the vet and secured a place in our home. He was quite young at the time, but lived a good long life to the age of 16. His adventures were many. There was the time he followed us down to the harbor and was swimming straight out in the Georgian Bay after the sound of the motor boat. It was only by luck that we spotted him. He made many trips down to the school bus stop to see us off. Tramp was a devoted consumer of our Easter candy. I don’t know how he lived through some of that!
Tramp was the scourge of all the cats living on our block. He made regular rounds to see what he could flush out. Of course, there were efforts made to keep him at home, but he was very persistent and broke out on a regular basis. Tramp was a great family dog as my brothers and I grew up in the small town of Thornbury, Ontario, with a population of 1200, right up the street from Georgian Bay. He would follow us to the grocery, manipulate open the doors, then come and lie down in the grocery aisle where we were shopping. Of course, he was not pleased with being evicted from the store and would lie on his back upside down. Tramp definitely wanted to stay with his people. My mom worked at a nursing home across the street and many residents came to know Tramp. Yes, he made regular expeditions across the street; [he] would force open the heavy wooden doors and go find my mom. I remember that he was eventually neutered and became slightly less adventuresome.
Tim Beau (Oregon) I lived with my brother, Mom, and Mommy Elf (Elfreda, my grandmother) in an old Victorian duplex with no yard. I was about five when we got Danny, a collie/shepherd mix. It was not a good choice for the location on a four-lane thoroughfare with two preschool-age boys. We lived in Portland on Burnside Street. It’s the street that divides the city, so obviously it had a lot of traffic. I can’t imagine how the adults could think Danny would be a breed for this location. We accidentally let him out and, of course, he got hit by a passing car. Luckily, there was a veterinary hospital in the next block, across the street. After the second accident, two boys were in tears when Danny was re-homed to a family in the country. Our second dog was even sadder. I don’t understand how this could have happened, but that dog lived for only a week or so. I think it had distemper. Number three was much better. Now we lived in outer suburbia with a Samoyed, Tika.
Manda Jean (Wisconsin) Tugg was my first dog. Circe came ten months later. I got them from a Shar-Pei breeder in Nebraska and they made me fall in love with the breed. They were both quirky, smart, and fiercely loyal. Tuggy was born in ’06 and Circe ’07. I was in my 20s. They saw me through graduation, home ownership, a marriage, and a divorce. They were my rocks. I lost them both to cancer in 2017 and 2019. I miss them every day and I recently adopted a senior Pei in need in their honor.
Photo by Katie Cronin
Amy Suggars (Ohio) [We lived in] Western Pennsylvania. My brother, sister, and I really wanted a pet. My mom said no to a dog but yes to a cat, but my dad said NO! to any pet! One fall there was a young stray cat hanging around the neighborhood. My dad again said no! but then he went away for the weekend. Mom said we could have the cat and we went to the store to buy food, bowls, litter, etc. When my dad returned home, Herman, a male white DSH cat was a member of the family! My dad and Herman became friends and Herman would sleep in my dad’s lap. We always had a cat in the family after that!!
Michael Curran (Texas) [We were living in] Northern California. My first dog was an extremely fearful golden retriever responsible for multiple bites on my friends growing up. My parents picked her when I was a baby and I grew up with her until I was 13 years old. I never really bonded with her, and she bit me once when I was six years old. I think I grabbed her rear as she was going under the table trying to get away from me.
Lacey Olson (Washington) We lived in an apartment complex in the Spokane Valley. I was sooooo excited because we could finally have a pet indoors! My first pet was a worm named Simon. I was about five years old and found him while I was playing outside. I guess you could call him a rescue. We made a little newspaper habitat and fed him grass. He lived for about two days.
Susan Ewing (New York) My first pet was a garter snake. My dad made a nice cage for it. Sometimes it got loose in the house, notably once when my mother had ladies in for bridge. They were less than thrilled.
Ann Marie Danimus (Washington) Missy. She was my parent’s cat first and had NO patience for a toddler. Once I crawled under a chair to try to pet her and I backed out in my diaper, upset. My mom asked me what was wrong and I said, “Kitty go hissssss!” She was misunderstood.
Photo by Gina Lehuta Nichols
Gina Lehuta Nichols (Illinois) I hesitate to post this because of the terrible life my Buffy had and the overwhelming guilt I feel. I have never told this story this publicly before and it hurts my heart to think of the sad life my Buffy had. Buffy was my very first dog ever. [We lived in] Chicago. We got him when I was about five years old. I was thrilled. He was a complete surprise. Shortly after we got him, my Buffy became a basement/outside dog—I’m guessing because of the lack of potty training and probably the hair. I remember hearing him howl at night, just begging for attention. We were told to howl back because he was just doing what dogs did. So we howled with him from upstairs until he fell asleep. I know better now. It haunts me when I think of how sad he was.
I remember when it would rain, the basement would flood and poor Buffy would have to jump puddles just to get to his dry ripped up blue chair. It haunts me to think of the cold, wet, dark basement he lived in. I remember my brother and I going down there to play with him. We built an agility course made out of plywood, hula hoops, ladders, and dressers. We lured him through the course with hot dogs. He was fantastic! Could’ve been such an amazing agility dog! This was way before I had ever even heard of agility. It was just fun for us and for him. It haunts me when I think of how he loved all of the attention that we rarely gave him.
I remember trying to cut his matted fur. I was only about ten years old but I knew he had to be so uncomfortable. I caught his skin so many times. I hugged him each time so hard because I felt so bad that I hurt him. Even when I caught his skin he never got aggressive. I think he just loved having any attention at all. He knew I loved him like crazy. It haunts me to think of the love he gave even when he was in pain. I remember getting older and spending more and more time with him. Talking to him. Telling him everything. He was the one I was able to tell everything to.
Buffy was smart! Smart like crazy. He learned tricks and cues so easily. All he wanted was some loving. I remember begging to allow him in the house. He was afraid to walk through the door to the kitchen, so we’d spend five minutes and go right back out to the porch. I remember the day I said goodbye to him. My brother was taking him to have him put to sleep. I learned later that my brother didn’t stay with him when my Buffy crossed the bridge. I learned that Buffy died alone. It haunts me that I didn’t go with. That my Buffy had such a miserable life and that my Buffy died alone. I think of you often, my Boofafloo. I promise never to allow any dogs in my life to have to live the way you did. I told you that I would always remember you and I do. Always! I love you! I love you! I love you!
Megan Cuilla (Washington) My family adopted Muffin (female/short hair/calico) and Biscuit (male/medium hair/tuxedo) from Orphans of the Storm in Illinois in the early ’80s. Biscuit very quickly made himself “my” cat. I would carry him around and he’d wrap his paws around my neck. He slept with me every night, except the night I came home with a very ’80s “girl perm,” which he apparently did not approve of because he hissed and swatted at me. He was my baby. He died when I was a sophomore in high school. I was there with him till the end. Biscuit was the beginning of my lifelong love affair with cats.
Shelley Bueche (Texas) [We lived in] Austin, 5808 Highland Hills Drive, just up the hill from the vet office. Convenient, no? J.R. (Junior), a half yellow Lab/half Rhodesian ridgeback, was originally intended to be a hunting dog for my Uncle Robert. When J.R. flunked hunting school, he became a family dog to my mother, my sister, and myself. Although it was just the three of us, J.R. served as a father/brother figure rolled into one! He was the source of hijinks in our household—scarfing down birthday cakes, hogging the furniture—and we loved it and him. In addition, J.R. was the neighborhood mascot, beloved by all!
Janet Galante (Arizona) Peppi would mouth my little arm and play tug with my socks . . . while they were still on my feet. He would stand in front of my friends while we sat on the sofa playing with our dolls. He kept us there by giving us the eye or a little growl if we moved. He ran around the neighborhood with me, playing in the empty lot on the corner with my friends and their dogs, then in a big cow pasture behind the house after we moved. He was the real-life “Poodle with a Mohawk” depicted in Lynda Barry’s cartoon. He was small and black and mad as hell, and while you could not call him Fifi, he did answer to Peppi. He loved my dad and was happy to have my seven-year-old self as a plaything. He always had a bad hair day, thanks to my dad’s grooming abilities. We always had miniature black poodles, but he was the first of which I own the memories. [He was] a clever boy. I taught him the tricks of a kid. He could sit pretty on the backrest of the car while it was moving. He stayed with me as I followed ants down the sidewalks trying to learn where they all were going. Peppi died, as so many dogs did before vaccinations, of distemper. He was a terrible dog that I loved. [He lived with us] first in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, and then we moved to Columbus, Ohio.
Katie Cronin (Ontario) I lived on a farm in Belmont, Ontario. I was about ten years old when my mom told me that I wasn’t going to a youth event that I had been excited to go to, but my disappointment was gone quickly when she told me it was because of a surprise. I half-jokingly guessed [that it might be] because we were getting a puppy to go with our current dog (who we got just after I was born so don’t remember getting), and when she gave my brother a side glance, I realized we actually were [getting a puppy]! We named her Holly, a part collie, part Lab. She looked nothing like her parents or siblings, though, with the white markings and her curled tail! She ended up becoming “my dog,” despite my mom’s originally saying [the dog] would be “hers.” I played with [the puppy] all the time, trained her. We lived on a 100-acre farm, so there was plenty of room for us to romp around. For almost a week, in school, I remember I used to think of her and get so homesick, I left early a few days so I could go see her (though I didn’t tell them that’s why I felt sick!).
We used to have a barn that cats lived in, and I even trained her to search for kittens when the females gave birth, since they used to hide them in the haystacks upstairs. It was never an issue—we never really used the upstairs, but we just liked knowing where they were so we could meet them and get them used to us since we fed them every day. We used to joke that Holly was part kangaroo, the way she jumped. She’d jump up in the air a bit and then kick off with her hind legs, jumping as high as I was tall. I’d swing a toy, stick, or long plant that grew on the farm in a circle above my head and would tell her to stay, stay, JUMP. When I said jump she’d go for it and catch it!
Eventually I got older, as did she . . . as, of course, life goes. She was always my pup, though. Finally came the day I moved out, and she remained on the farm. Then I got engaged, and my wedding day was coming up. It was about a week before my big day that I got the call from my dad that she had passed away. She had been going deaf and blind, got too close to the road, and was hit by a car. It was quick. She was up there in age, so it was a matter of time anyway, but in my mind, I still remembered “my dog” and all the adventures we had. I miss that girl.
What are your memories of your first pet?
