animals, Fantasy, home, Nature, pets, Uncategorized

Our Companions

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As I clicking around yesterday, I found a list of the best breeds for each astrological sign.  If you can get past the idea that all of humanity can be dumped into just twelve categories, based on the month in which they were born, can you get past the idea that all people born in a certain month will all be suited to the same dog? 

  • Aquarius – Siberian Husky
  • Pisces – Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
  • Aries – Labrador Retriever
  • Taurus – German Shepherd
  • Gemini – American Pit Bull Terrier
  • Cancer – Old English Sheep Dog
  • Leo – Border Collie
  • Virgo – Dachshund
  • Libra – Bernese Mountain Dog
  • Scorpio – Rhodesian Ridgeback
  • Sagittarius – French Bulldog

Even if you CAN get past both these problems, this list is seriously flawed.  First off, it’s missing the best two dogs on the planet – the Irish Setter and the Samoyed.  I’m guessing that a few other baboons will think there are others missing – English setters, terriers, bassets.  My mother would absolutely dispute the choice for her sign – only the Golden Retriever would make her list.  Then there’s the problem of all the fabulous dogs whose pedigrees are unknown.

For me, I’m not sure the Border Collie represents me well.  Although I certainly like to keep busy, I don’t think of myself as particularly driven and pandemic has made it clear that I have big-time couch potato tendencies.

Do you think there’s a perfect pet to match your personality?

70 thoughts on “Our Companions”

      1. I started out my dog ownimg career with dogs that I purchased from breeders. I was always careful that these were show breeders and it was actually heartening to me (although not to my wasband) that you were really on trial with these breeders before they would let you have one of their dogs. My last several dogs have all been rescues. Even though they were purebreds, they came from specific purebred rescue organizations that I trusted. Of course with rescue organizations you are also on trial before you get a dog. The paperwork to get my Irish setter Rhiannon was about eight pages long.

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    1. I love huskies as well. But having been the owner of serial Samoyed s, I can tell you that you need to have multiple vacuum cleaners. We have one on each floor of our house.

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    2. a siberian husky is considered the cat of dogs
      they are not mans best friend but all about themselves. you are only here to allow them to be happier not vice versa. i had my wolf dog that was listed at the humane society as a husky blend so when he died i went to the husky rescue society and the woman asked me what i liked best about zeke the wolf dog and when i told here she said the stuff i liked in the dog were not characteristic of huskies. i have noticed this since she pointed it out.

      i’m a picies and i have always like but never had a spaniel
      my uncle used to have a spaniel then another and another
      they are great dogs
      maybe look at spaniel mutts down the road
      i really like my dogs
      and my cats
      and my fish

      can you do this with spouses?

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  4. My father loved dogs, and adored pugs. He also loved our cats, and they followed him around when he lived with us. He would share bits of his meals with them.

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  5. Rise and Pet the Dog, Baboons,

    As much as I do not believe that all humanity can fit into 12 zodiac signs, I read my horoscope most days. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know why, but it does not hurt anything—I usually forget the prediction within 5 minutes and go about my day.

    Therefore, I intensely doubt that our companion preferences can be sorted this easily. I think our current dog, a Corgi-something rescue dog, has been a wonderful companion for me. I have been missing our dog that died 2 months ago lately, too. She was a wonderful watchdog, despite her nearly untrainable nature. Lucky was a beagle-terrier mix with all the problems of each breed, yet I still miss her a lot.

    When I took her to the dog park, she would wander off, then run back as fast as possible, ears back, hellbent for leather, with this funny smile she turned on humans. So many people would look at me and say, “She is smiling at me.” Yes, indeed, she did. RIP Lucky.

    With the cold weather and the snow, our other roommates, the kitchen mice are back. WWWAAAAAA. Caught three the other night. War has been declared.

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      1. Interestingly, our Bootsy is an impressive hunter. While in our back yard, I saw her take a mole out of its trench and snap its neck in a heart beat. No rodent can exist here if it is within her reach. However, she is so darn short, and unlike a cat, does not willfully get on the counter.

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        1. You write that as if that’s a negative trait? Or am I reading that wrong? Either way, that very characteristic is why I’ve had three doxies.

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        2. I meant it as a positive. This dog is really a wonderful pet in all ways. She is the one who was mauled by a neighbor dog. She has healed now, but she is having some trauma reactions and nightmares.

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  6. I’ve been thinking about different pets this morning. We had one of those fighting fish for a couple of years and I really thought of changing his water as a nuisance. I’m not sure why doing some thing once a week bothered me when I feed the dogs dog and cat twice a day but it seemed like a big chore. Now of course I realize what I should have done was buy a second tank and at my leisure during the week I could get it all set up and then maybe on Saturday just transfer him from one tank to the other. Wish I had thought of it at the time.

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  7. Anybody notice Capricorn is missing from the list? According to this, I would have a French Bulldog. No thanks! Although I have been a dog lover since childhood and came late to being a cat lover, I would prefer a lap cat who purrs a lot.

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    1. My guess is that this is my fault when I was typing last night. But I can’t find that original dodo list to save my life right now. However I am noticing that all the other articles that I’m finding of best breeds for astrological signs are all different from each other.

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  8. I also believe you can’t sort everyone into twelve groups, for this or anything else. I have an astrologer friend who has educated me a bit, though – the 12 sun signs are just the starting point, and, contrary to the newspaper stuff (which I agree is fun to look at), are only a fraction of the info needed to learn anything useful. I’ve never gone out of my way to explore, though I have had a few readings, one of which was startlingly correct.

    My favorite dogs, from those I’ve know well enough, have been wither a collie mix (border collie size), or a German shepherd mix. I can also imagine myself with terriers, after hearing some of you describe them.

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    1. BiR Labs are a lot like goldens. I’ve lived with both. They are probably the most trainable of all the breeds, as both have an unusually high desire to please. To my mind, Labs are more dawgs and goldens are exceptionally affectionate and a wee bit more likely to be soft. They are unusually easy to live with.

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  10. I once had a salamander. I don’t remember why or much of anything about him (or her—who can tell?) except his/her name was Alexander and he/she favored a particularly dank spot in the basement. He/she ate meal worms. I don’t remember what became of Alexander but I can tell you that salamanders are not as impervious to fire as they say (just kidding).

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    1. During my gloriously brief career at W.T. Grant in Riverhead, Long Island, I was the Wednesday relief caretaker of the pet department. Their offerings were mostly birds, fish, gerbils, guinea pigs, and baby alligators. The morning duties consisted of scooping dead fish out of the various aquariums, and catching the odd bird that had somehow escaped its cage during the night. That, and feeding them, and cleaning their cages. It was a stint that did nothing to entice me to ever have any of those critters for pets, especially not the alligators, which were nasty little things. Despite their only 5 to 6″ bodies, they terrorized me by hissing at me and attempting to bite my hand when trying to feed them. It’s no mystery to me why the sewers of NY allegedly were crawling with them a few years later. It remains a mystery to me, however, why they were allowed to sell them; they do not make good pets.

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  11. One thing no one mentioned on Friday was pet health insurance. I was thinking that if we spent a bunch of bucks on a purebred Welsh Terrier, I might get pet insurance, given our past experiences with their wild, health endangering ways.

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  13. I like other people’s dogs, but have never really felt the urge to acquire one myself. Cats are better roommates.

    I thought about it briefly, though, when I heard about some country, I think in Europe, that had imposed a lockdown that kept everyone literally in their house, all the time. An exception was made for people walking their dogs. I thought if we ever had a lockdown like that here, I’d have to adopt or perhaps foster a dog, so that I could go out for walks. I think it would just make me crazy to not leave the house for days or weeks at a time.

    If I did ever get a dog, I would want it to be small enough for me to lift. Not much bigger than a cat. Twenty-five pounds or less. Maybe a chihuahua mix or small terrier mix or something like that.

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    1. standard poodles are wonderful (don’t shed) my folks got one when i was like 10.
      otto
      hushabye jaque of the jones manor was his pedigree name
      lived 8 or 9years
      a great dog

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  15. My family had a poodle when I was in high school – a surprise gift from our neighbor. She was not your typical pooch. Her mother was a standard and her father was a miniature. She ended up being medium sized. Her fur was gently wavy instead of curly. We did try to give her a traditional poodle cut once but it didn’t work too well. So we would keep her body and legs cut very short (no bracelets) – Mom used a clippers to do the job. She had a long tail with straight fur at the tip. People would ask us what kind of breed she was. Though the breed has a reputation for intelligence, ours acted more like a good old mutt. Despite her shortcomings, she was a good pet and we loved her.

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  16. For ten years I walked two hours a day in a dog park. Not surprisingly, I had contact with many breeds. In the end, somewhat to my surprise I came to admire two “designer dogs,” the golden doodle and labradoodle. I don’t like the idea of people creating new breeds by crossing existing breeds. And yet the labradoodles and golden doodles in our park were happy, affectionate dogs that nobody could dislike. They result from crossing a standard poodle (which is not common, but is a wonderful breed) with a golden retriever or a Lab. They used to fetch a handsome price. I don’t know what the market is like today. They weigh 35 to 45 pounds, which is not too big for many families.

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    1. I know a couple of standard labradoodles, both extremely well behaved (trained well) and a joy to be around, just delightful dogs. They are both males and roughly 60 lbs. Personality wise they remind me of the Portuguese Water dogs I’ve known, really sweet and gentle dogs.

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    3. One of my favorite “acquaintance dogs” was a cocker doodle (don’t start crowing). Belonged to my sister-in-law Rose’s family – her 11-yr-old daughter begged for a birthday puppy, which they ended up getting her. Rose really didn’t want a dog, but fell in love with this doodle once she got used to Callie – they’d bring her to family gatherings, she was one of my favorite dogs ever.

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    4. There is a vet who leads a charge to quit doing these breeds. They are not healthy and often not treated well. Seen as prestige possession and not animals. He thinks we need to cut back to a very few breeds. He says he gets rich from those breeds but he is tired of dealing with miserable dogs.

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        1. If they’re temperamentally like golden retrievers, I can’t imagine any two of them ever going in the same direction at the same time.

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  18. Well, a German Shepard for Taurus works for me. But there are so many great dogs! The only issue I’ve had with a dog was the strays I picked up that wouldn’t get along with my other dogs.

    I have a few dog stories to share:
    When I was working for the Ag Department and I’d go to farms and measure grain bins, there was a few places we were warned about. Call first to be sure the dog was tied up. Was told later the dog was ALWAYS tied up.
    There was another place with a German Shepard that would run at you barking and about the second you thought you better get back in the car, he’d flip over on his back and pee on you.
    Way back when, I played a butler for the ‘Christmas Teas’ at Mayowood Mansion. One day since it was raining, I had to get from this end of the mansion to that end by using a basement passage I had only been in once before. It was dark, I didn’t really know where I was going, and as I got to the kitchen steps I could tell there was *something* on the step. As I stepped over it, it woke up. It was the german shepard that was usually outside. I surprised him as much as he surprised me and he barked and my heart leapt out of my chest. Then we both calmed down. I’ve still got my legs apart as I was stepping over him. I stepped into the kitchen and closed the door and fell back against the door to get my breath. Thought I was going to die in the stairway and no one would ever find me.

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    1. Ben’s story reminds me of a friend who visited the home of a friend somewhere in Pennsylvania. The door was unlocked, so Jerry walked in and prepared to wait. Two huge Dobermans suddenly appeared. Jerry made a desperate jump and landed on top of a table. He stayed there for about three hours while the Dobermans circled around him like those raptor dinos in Jurassic Park. This home was in a new development where every house is identical to all its neighbors, so Jerry had walked into the home of someone he didn’t know, someone surprised to find a total stranger standing on his dining room table when he got home.

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    3. Reminds me of the cop that arrived to check out my report that there was someone in the basement of the old mansion where I lived. There were two accesses to the basement: one from the outside, and one from my kitchen.

      When the cop arrived at my front door we could hear a lot of shouting going on in one of the upstairs apartments. He listened for a moment and said: “That sounds like Ed Budach. I confirmed that it was, but that that wasn’t the reason I had called. Ed was an upstairs neighbor, who was the nicest person in the world when he was sober, but there was no predicting what might happen when he got drunk. He was in regular contact with the police due to these mishaps, and the whole local correctional community knew him well.

      I explained to the cop about the noise coming from the basement. It sounded like a sizeable person randomly stumbling about and bumping into things. He said he’d check it out. Flashlight in hand, he started down the stairs to the basement from my kitchen. When he reached the landing, he came rushing back up, looking really scared. “It’s a dog,” he stammered, “a big black dog.” “Oh, that’s Boots,” I reassured him, “he’s harmless.”

      Boots was Eddie’s big, black Newfie, whose only enemy in the world was an Irish setter that routinely ran free in the neighborhood. Boots would often be chained in our front yard, never barked and never bothered anyone, until that Irish setter came by. Then he’d snap his chain, jump the fence, and give chase. I never did find out why Boots was in the basement that evening, it was the first and only time he was there. Eddie had just returned from a stint in the workhouse, so I had an entirely different scenario worked out in my head of what have been down there.
      I was quite relieved that it was Boots, it could have been so much worse.

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  19. I had two dogs in my life that looked and behaved as if they were purebred. One was border collie. Not sure who the father was, mother was purebred it seems, but father unlikely to have been a border collie. He was small for a border collie, but some are.
    Second one we had for our kids, whom I have written about before, how she adored Sandy and followed her reflection in framed pictures on the wall. She was not allowed into more than half the house. Her mother was pedigreed, father was likely to have been the cockapoo next door because two of the siblings looked like that father in many ways. A couple Samoyed huskie owners when they saw her knew she was not purebred. But she had the nature of a Samoyed. Fur was long and a pain in the butt to deal with, but not as bad as a purebred. When we moved to Kato we had an old cat and an old dog. We were wondering how that was going to go. But Eleanor the dog was hit on Highway 61 in front of our house two weeks before our move. Sandy forgot to tie her up, as she often did. She had never gone on the highway before. She was miserable in her old age, it seemed to me. I know she did, not but it seems she committed suicide. Franklin the cat we moved with us. She hid for several days when we first arrived. That house was a cat’s dream, so many crannies to hide in. Then she did come out. 5 weeks later I sat on the cushion on our settle bench and it squished underneath me. Cat urine. We took her to a vet. He said she should be put down, which was our point in bringing her. He said it was a tricky issue because we had not been to him before. It took a bunch of paper work and quite a bit of money. but he did.
    That was 23 years ago. No pets since. But our daughter has cats. Two characters right now. Bean and Maury.

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  20. I want my sign to be Ophiuchus. You will have to look that up for the full story. A few years back NASA said the signs were wrong because the earth’s axis had shifted. And they added that sigh. Debunked claim now it seems. Why was Nasa wondering into the swamp of astrology in the first place?

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  21. Now that I see the name Cockapoo (in Clyde’s story), I realize that’s what I was talking about. Internet does talk about a cocker doodle, but it seems to be a mix of the spaniel with a TOY poodle.

    Love all these dog stories coming out of the woodwork.

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