Puppy love

Looks like there's another missing mutt in the neighborhood. The lamp posts and stop signs are plastered with notices about a lost chocolate lab.

Poor thing! It's so easy to get lost among these cookie-cutter houses, even for a dog. For all you know, that poor pooch could be lost in the Indian reservation bordering our community, or worse, he could already be a part of the asphalt.

It's no fun being homeless, take it from me. I'm not sure which is worse - the hungry gnawing in your belly or the fact that nobody gives a rat's patootie about you. It's like being in a roomful of people and knowing that nobody will miss you if you were to walk away.

Now, mom would beg to disagree, but I chose her to spend my life with. She believes it was destiny - the stars aligned and our paths crossed at a time when she was yearning for some unconditional love.

Picture it: A warm sunny day in 1996. I was walking down the street minding my own business and checking pee-mail among the bushes, when along came Animal Control and rudely plucked me off the street. I was unceremoniously dumped in a cold, noisy, smelly kennel, where I languished, unclaimed, for a week.

It was around this time that mom was volunteering at the local animal shelter, instead of staying home and packing on the pounds, as most H-4 brides are wont to do.

OK, who am I kidding? She packed on the pounds, regardless of whether she stayed home and ate potato chips all afternoon in front of the TV or not.

She spotted me one afternoon at the pound, in a reeking cage with another puppy. She bent down to get a closer look at the pup, but I pushed myself between them. Mom didn't stand out like Angelina Jolie in a Third World orphanage, but she sure looked like a sucker for a wagging tail. So, I turned on the charm and tried to look as cute as a seven-month-old-scruffy-pup-badly-in-need-of-a-bath could possibly look. Something must have tugged at her heart strings, because she opened the door to my cage.

I made a leap of faith into her arms, and in that brief moment, as my honey-colored eyes locked into hers, I knew I had her at hello.

She paid the $40 needed to release me, signed on the dotted line and legally became my human.

To this day, mom naively believes that she rescued me to give me a better life.

Little does she know that it's the other way around.