When we lived at my old house, my parents had a large husky named Cooper they had adopted from a farmer. I did not know the word for husky, but I had seen pictures of Lassie in a pet fancy magazine and thought they looked alike. For many years, I thought Cooper was not a husky, but a collie!
My parents actually had two dogs, though, and the other one was named Millie. Millie was a terrier who did not have quite the gentle spirit of Cooper. Sometimes she would run away and my dad would chase her on his bike. She would look back, not recognize him at all, and just run faster! She was always getting into trouble. My mom used to try and find tips in Dog Fancy Magazine to see if there was something she could do, but nothing worked for Rascally Millie. Eventually she ran away for good, and my parents were never able to find her.
When we moved to our new house, Cooper developed an infection in his leg, and would bite through the plastic covering. One day I came down to breakfast, and my parents told me they watched his angel go to heaven during the night. Me and my sister would read pet magazines in her room, looking for pictures of dogs that looked like he had, as if to remind ourselves. Cooper was followed by a cat named Percy. A year after Percy came to our family, my brother was born. Though he was okay with our cat, he was allergic to almost all furry creatures, including dogs.
My sister Kelsey and I would ignore his allergies and plan on our new dog. We would carry around dog fancy magazine and show our relatives the black lab we had picked out. Once she even dragged our pet magazine around on a leash, though it only made our mom laugh, not get us a dog. The pet magazine was not a very good companion.
Nowadays we both read dog fancy magazine online, and send each other articles about the dogs we might get. We pretend we are going to use the pet magazine recipes for home made dog treats to make treats for our currently invisible dogs. Maybe one day a fancy dog magazine will have a picture of one of our dogs in it, and a real dog, at that.