Farmers always have a lot of pets We had the usual dogs and cats (once, I think we counted 13 cats) The first dog I remember was "Penny". She was a copper-colored terrier (hence, the name Penny) and met her doom during an encounter with a cement truck.Then we had "Smokey", who came to us from Paul and Marie Kamla; they had more baby dogs than they could deal with. We had Smokey for several years, until he learned that chasing chickens was a lot of fun!
When our little sister, Eunice was small, We had a large, white German Shepherd named Gilda; and a small, black pekingese mix named Nipper. They were very competitive for affection, and whenever we gave Gilda something to eat that she didn't particularly want, all we had to say was "here Nipper", and Gilda would gobble down the food.
Gilda wasn't a very friendly dog, especially after she had a large family. We were considering "sending her away", until one day she killed a rattlesnake right outside our front door where Eunice was playing. Gilda was bitten by the snake but survived; and after that, Mamma decided that she was a GOOD dog!We made pets of our cows, too. I remember once when Sherri was little, her "cow" was a steer who was destined for market. She was pretty upset when we had to "sell her cow". Most of our milk cows had names--I remember, especially, Babe, Cherry and Angy. Several of our other farm animals got their names because we thought they looked like people we knew (who shall remain nameless).
Even the wild animals couldn't escape. We had a pet pigeon named Rajah, whose wings we clipped so he couldn't fly away. Rajah would ride behind us on the bicycle. 
And the snakes couldn't escape us, either.. We had great fun in the haymow, poking around at the bullsnakes and making them hiss at us. We were just lucky that some of those bullsnakes didn't turn out to be rattlesnakes!We caught hundreds of tadpoles one year, and put them in the stock tank. I'm sure my dad appreciated that!
I know a lot of you other readers have pet stories. I'd love to hear them.
-- Submitted by Leone Carlson
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