A VERY SPECIAL STORY ABOUT A SPECIAL PAPILLON |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 "I’m a man who grew in up in a household that was full of cats.
My mom always had cats. My mom loved Cats. She even
had a few cats she called mine. I always thought cats were
cool. I liked having them around but it nothing that I couldn’t
live without or couldn’t wait to get home to see. But, that’s the
way things went at my house. It was a cat house. When I was
young, I did have a dog or two as pets that were kept outside.
I never really got that close to them because as a kid I had so
much other stuff to do. I just didn’t warm up to dogs and
figured I was just not a "pet" person. When I first met my wife, she had a little Papillon. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a small dog and in my opinion at the time, it was a kind of girlie dog. She did like to play with a ball, but I’m a fairly big man and I always thought I would hurt her if I played with her much. So I pretty much just left it alone and let my wife attend to the dog the way she wanted to.   Well, as years passed and we got our own home,
we talked about having a dog of our own. (Our dog)
When the conversation turned to dogs, I was
thinking about Border Collies and she wanted a dog
to stay in the house. I thought a Jack Russell’s a good
size, we can keep him in the house. That’s what my mind
was sort of set on. We would talk about it for a while and
it always came back to a Papillon. And like I said, they are
small. What can a big guy like me do with a dog like that?
So the conversations just sort of went away. Time passed.
No dog.  Every few months the conversation would come
up again and it would go the same way. We just couldn’t
agree and I didn’t want to say that I didn’t want a Papillon
but I did want a dog of some sort. One night my wife came
home from work with a newspaper ad that had Papillons.
I said oh boy, here we go. Looks like the end of the road
for it. After a day or two of talking about it, we sort of
let it rest. We weren’t going to get one at this point
either. It wasn’t the best time to get a dog so we
decided we just wouldn’t.Well, finally, a day or two after that even, I called this breeder. And guess what, he had one left. One little boy. He said this little boy was real cute and he would probably be a good stud dog. Said he thought he might have a little bit of the devil in him because he was always into some kind of mischief. Well, that perked my curiosity quit a bit. A little Papillon. Hmmmm That’s got some of the demon in him? Sounds interesting to me. So I talked to the man and asked him if he would hold the dog until Saturday and we’d come take a look at him.  Well, as Saturday quickly approached, hoping, kind of,
that the guy would probably get rid of the dog sometime
between that time, we called him Saturday morning
to get directions to his house. He said the dog was
still there and waiting for us to come take a look.
So we headed out on a journey to look at a little Papillon.
Well, these folks had a long driveway. The second we
turned in the driveway you could look up at the end and
there was a little dog pen sitting there. A little fellow was
sitting in it (a little black and white Papillon. He was just
sitting there looking around at the birds flying over. He
looked very cute and we looked at each other and said,
"boy, I hope that’s him. He is really really cute." Well,
we got out of the car and walked up to the pen and he
got up and walked across the pen and put his little
paws up on the gate. My wife bent down and picked
him up and from that moment on she never wanted to
put him down. We ended up naming this little guy
Michelangelo Antonio. Yes, that’s what we call him,
Michelangelo. And like alot of Papillons that I’ve read
about in the past, he tries his best to live up to that name.
Actually, he’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. He’s a year old now and every single day, (and I’m not
exaggerating), with this little fellow has been a pleasure.
When you get up in the morning and your back’s hurting
and you’ve really got a lot of hard things to do that day,
and you’re sitting there thinking about what kind of day
it’s going to be, thinking this is really going to be a
tough one ahead, and you hear him barking in there,
because he’s ready to go out for his morning walk,
and you go in there and you see that incredible
smiling face, all of the bad things that can go wrong
during the day, all the hardness, seem to melt away.
You take him for his walk and he does something
silly that makes you laugh. Sort of lets you know
that the day ahead is not going to be that difficult
or that tough.  You just start looking forward to coming back to him and being able to play with him. You see just how much fun life can actually be. The amazing thing about him is the wonderment in his eyes when he looks at a rabbit or sees a bird fly. There must be some magic in him. The magic, I guess, is what makes you fall for him the minute you see him. That’s exactly what happened to me. For my wife it was a natural thing because a Papillon was exactly what she wanted. But for me, a Papillon just wasn’t my idea of a dog.  If you’re idea of a dog is a best friend, then
that’s exactly what he is. He is your best friend. You can
tell him anything you want to tell him and I promise he
won’t tell anybody else. He makes you feel better when
you’re sad. Makes you laugh. Just makes you feel good
all inside. That’s what a dog’s supposed to do, be a
pleasure to you. Be a help. And that’s exactly what he
is. Oh, and by the way, did I mention that he tops out
at 13 pounds. That’s a pretty decent size for a Papillon,
I’d say. Got all the looks that one carries with him, a
beautiful tail, outstanding ears, beautiful eyes, and
of course he’s faster than a jack rabbit. He will retrieve
a ball like no Jack Russell I’ve ever seen.If you had to sum up a PAPILLON in a single word, you couldn’t do it. But a good place to try might be the word AWESOME!" |
|
|
 |
 HOME
|
 SPECIAL INTERESTS
|
Happy Pappy Productions
1995-2010