{"id":17228,"date":"2016-09-24T23:34:16","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T23:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17228"},"modified":"2016-09-25T02:11:51","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T02:11:51","slug":"puppy-tales-part-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=17228","title":{"rendered":"Puppy Tales, Part 27"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"puppy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve declared already my belief that we need to dump the term “pet owner” in favor of “pet parent.”<\/p>\n

Toby the Puppy isn’t just our dog. He’s our baby. He’s our “good boy.”<\/p>\n

He also isn’t just a possession<\/em>. He’s a member of the family.<\/p>\n

You have known this already, through the posts I’ve put out detailing our life with Toby, whom we acquired two years ago this month.<\/p>\n

He joined our family in a most unexpected fashion. But it was no time at all before he captured our hearts. In fact, it well might have been love at first sight — for him as well as for us.<\/p>\n

My wife and I have been married for 45 years. For most of that time we’ve had cats in our family. I can count precisely two dogs joining our family during that time. We had one in Portland for a brief period; after we moved to Beaumont, another pooch showed up one very hot, humid day in our garage. We had neither of those two dogs for very long.<\/p>\n

All the while, we remained a cat family.<\/p>\n

Toby joined us while we still had two kitties. They were getting older. Socks died suddenly in November 2014; we lost Mittens just this past February.<\/p>\n

Neither of them were possessions, either. They were our babies every bit as much as Toby has been.<\/p>\n

When we traveled two Germany and The Netherlands earlier this month, we took Toby to a pet spa, where he was treated well, spoiled and pampered.<\/p>\n

We missed him terribly while we were away.<\/p>\n

One does not miss something you “own.” Did I miss\u00a0our car, or\u00a0our pickup or our recreational vehicle? Did I miss the house we’ve called home in Amarillo for nearly 20 years? Not for one second.<\/p>\n

Toby the Puppy? We missed him.<\/p>\n

That convinced me beyond all reasonable doubt that one is not a pet owner. One is a pet parent<\/em> — especially when the pet is as lovable as those who have come into our lives over the years.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve declared already my belief that we need to dump the term “pet owner” in favor of “pet parent.” Toby the Puppy isn’t just our dog. He’s our baby. He’s our “good boy.” He also isn’t just a possession. He’s a member of the family. You have known this already, through the posts I’ve put … Continue reading Puppy Tales, Part 27<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3580,6016],"class_list":["post-17228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-pets","tag-toby-the-puppy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17228"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17234,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17228\/revisions\/17234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}