I’ll be truthful, my last dog owning experience was a disaster. The puppy was given to me at the worst possible time in my life. I was working two jobs at the time and I lived in a 1 bedroom 500 sq ft apartment.

Add to that, the puppy was a Border Collie/Lab mix. Probably the smartest dog that I have ever seen in real life, but those type of dogs need full time jobs with full time owners.

You can see where this takes a bad turn. Basically, my life consisted of the following:

• Leaving for work in the morning
• Coming home to pick up poop and pee and to let the dog out to stretch its legs
• Rushing to my other job
• Rushing back home to let the dog out, eat dinner, rinse, lather and repeat.

One can understand why I refer to those days as “The Dark Times.” I eventually had to give the dog away. It wasn’t fair to both the dog and I. It broke my heart (I loved the little pup) but I had to do it.

That was years ago. After that incident, I swore that I would never put myself or a animal in that position again.

When Dear GF suggested that we get some dogs, I nearly died from the flashback. I imagined our brand new house being torn to shreds and the lovely odor of doggy bodily fluids filling the air. I resisted.

I resisted for months, but eventually Dear GF wore down my defenses and she got me to agree to “just look at some dogs.” It always starts out by just “looking at dogs” and the next thing you know you’re taking two of them home with you.

Needless to say, that night, we took home two [Australian] Silky Terriers. I have to admit, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

You can see more doggy photos on the Flickr set.