A dog s life

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                A dog’s life
               
Sometimes you hear how people complain, saying how tired they are of living a dog’s life.
Aza
This little black dog came to our young family by accident. Our relatives had come over from Belarus with their children. We decided to entertain them and took them to the zoo. After observing the animals, we decided to have a picnic. All of a sudden, a little dog runs up to us and starts begging and yelping at us. We ended up taking in the little creature, but we did not understand at the time what the responsibilities were—we had small children, jobs, and work around the house. Anyway, the little dog lived with us for a bit, but my parents passed  her onto other good hands.
A lot of time has passed since then. We moved into a new apartment and our children began asking us if we could get a dog. My husband and I resisted for a long time, but one day all gave up. One evening, a teacher friend of mine urgently asked me to come to school. I ran over, wondering what had happened. And suddenly I saw in my classroom office two little puppies—one who was all white and another who had a black ear. It turned out that one of the students had given the puppies to us. She didn’t know where else to take them, so she brought them to school. Anyway, for about a month, both puppies lived in my friend’s kitchen, and then we took the white one and named him named Pushok [Ed. note: meaning “fluffy”].
The dog quickly grew accustomed to our house and grew in size, too. He was benevolent and kind. Our children were busy with their sports and studies, so my husband and I were left to train the animal. The dog—calmly and cleverly—would listen intently to us, but as soon as he saw the first opportunity to escape, he would try to—one needed only to open the front door! He would play outside with the other dogs as much as he wanted.
One morning, I went to school upset—my students quickly understood what had happened and offered to run around the neighborhood and find the fugitive. I, of course, refused, and that evening, my husband went around the neighborhood and found our dog in the pack of the local ones who were milling around.
Whenever we would walk our little albino dog and meet owners of purebred dogs, they looked at our mongrel with respect. Sometimes we would take our dog swimming in the river with us. I remember once after, heavy rain, we had to walk along the grass, because I did not want to go on the water. Our dog was confused; it was scary to walk along the grass. But after that, our faithful dog started swimming along with us!
But our dog had his own hobby—singing to certain music! His concerts were heard across the apartment complex, since our apartment was located on the first floor, and his audience was always delighted! Every day after dinner, Pushok would jumped on the windowsill and look out the window expecting the arrival of the Kim from work. Seeing my husband hop off of the tram, Pushok would run to the door and howl loudly. All the neighbors knew: the daddy has come home! Nobody was upset that there was a dog barking.
Once, when I returned from vacation on a train, my husband met me at the station, holding the dog on a short leash. Seeing me, Pushok joyfully jumped and hugged me with his paws, joy visible on his beautiful face. We were so happy!
And what do you think—how has this dog changed our life? It’s been 25 years since then. One day at a tram stop, I saw two pretty young women, and one was holding a dog (on a leash) who looked exactly the same as my Pushok, only a female. I decided to introduce our dogs to each other to breed puppies. After a while, the owner of the dog came to our house, and we agreed to meet up at her house. In short, our dogs met, but did not like each other. But something else happened: our son, and the daughter of the owner, became interested in each other and fell in love. They then had a wedding at age 17—thanks to our dogs!
       
         
     Yes, thanks to our dogs, our children’s love persisted.   
 
            
                And we all moved to America bringing our pets with us. Sadly, our dogs are no longer alive, but we still remember and love them.