If you were to ask me one thing my parents did right in raising me as a child, my answer would be an immediate "They raised me with pets!" Most of my happy childhood memories involved me with a whole buncha dogs, two cats, a few lovebirds, and some fishies. But my favorite was always a Collie dog I grew up with (just picture an overweight Lassie because he had a Filipino diet). Whenever I was scared, he was there to comfort me. When my parents were tired from work and wanted to watch TV, I would just go to the backyard and my fat dog would greet me and play with me. One day I was curious about what it would feel like to be bit by a dog so I stepped on him on purpose and cried when he bit me real hard...lol. After he died of worms, I had a couple of other dogs: a mutt, a shih tzu, a blind AND deaf poodle, a lab retriever....It wasn't until my parents divorced when I was 7 that I wasn't allowed to have pets anymore. So I've suppressed this longing for a dog until I ...