One Saturday, my wife told me and the kids that we were going to the Labrador Rescue Society. I was skeptical but we went anyway.

There where at least 40 labs at this Ranch Farm house. I yelled, "Come here Willy," and only one dog came, with a toy in its mouth and a wagging tail. It dropped the toy so I threw it. Several other dogs went for it too but this dog brought it back and dropped it at my feet again.

It was "Willy" at first sight. It was a female lab but my wife insisted this is "the one" and her name will be Wilhelmina and her nick name is "Willy" for short.

Normally, it costs $40.00 to adopt but the lady who runs the lab society refused payment saying that many others have wanted to adopt her but she ran away from them. We were the only family she wanted to "come" to.

That was almost five years ago and it is true that "dog's are mans best friend."

My wife is a pretty good cook and I have gained some weight. When she jokes and asks, "So, when are you due?" I laugh and say that our second lab, "Wonka," is due anytime.

(Willy is a female Chocolate Labrador in search of a little sister named Wonka in Houston, Texas.)

Our next puppy was a boy (blue and white) so we named him Polu (blue in Hawaiian).

Then our third dog (puppy of the first two) we named Elekoni (elephant in Hawaiian). My husband just wanted to name his next dog "Elephant" because when our boy dog was young, he looked just like a baby elephant after he ate, color, fat stomach, short legs, etc.

The freaky thing is that our youngest who is only 21 months old, and never really heard the name "Dee-Dee" (except as a wee infant) would point out the window many times, and get all excited, and yell "Dee-Dee!" over and over. This was just after Mackenzie died of cancer (in my arms) and there was never anything outside that we could see....wierd huh?

All three of us at the same time said we should name him Brownie because he looked just like a brownie sitting in my daughter's lap. So that's what he became.

Of course, now that he's 3 years old, the question we get all the time is "Why did you name him Brownie?" They ask us this because he doesn't have a spot of brown on him, all his brown turned to silver!

Other times people think we named him after UPS because half the time we just call him Brown. LOL!

The fish died and I went to get water (we have to haul 600 gal. of water per week from town, no water on our land) and this guy asked if I wanted this blue tick hound pup he had. I couldn't resist so I said ok, and I was going to name him Fish because my girl's fish named Dog died, but he was already sort of going by the name Blue, so his name is Blue Fish. Oh-and he's a heck of a basketball player-go figure.

The original dog we were going to look at wasn't quite right for us, but there was a quiet, well behaved mutt who had been abandoned and obviously needed some love, so we adopted her and named her Sophie.

Marley is our 2 year old brussels griffon.

The first time we saw the pups, they were just a few days old. They were so cute, they didn't even have their eyes open yet.

It was a small litter of about 5 (I think) and I happened to pick one of them up. He was so tiny, he fit in the palm of my hand. I held him up close to my face and he started licking my chin.

I said to my husband, "this is the one!" The next time we saw them, they were little fuzz balls at about 14 days old. Oh my! they were so cute.

We took him home when he was 7 weeks and he sat on my husband's lap the entire drive home from the breeder.

We named him Copper after Copper Mountain in Colorado as it is one of our favorite places to ski.

That was 6 years ago and Copper still thinks he's a puppy.

I found out her owners no longer wanted her and her previous name was horrible.

Looking for a new name I wanted somthing to reflect her beautiful blue..blue eyes. I named her sapphire. Perfect for such a beautiful husky ( my baby girl).