When I was a child, pets were never a topic in our family. Both my parents had never had pets and I never missed having a pet, because I had my twin sister to play with and had lots of activities such as music and sport. Apparently when I was 9, my mum told me later, I wanted to have a pony. But my mum convinced me, that it was more convenient to visit the little pony up the hill than to have to look after a pony in our living room or back yard.
When I was 17 years old I was bitten by a dog while jogging and from than on I was scared of any dog, no matter what size. I still don’t like it, when a dog jumps up to my face while I am running and the owner just tells me “he just wants to play!”
When I was 23, I was again bitten by a dog – a dachshund! - And that made my relationship to dogs even worse. I wouldn’t come into somebodies house unless the dog was locked away and I would never touch a dog.
My extreme good sense of smell increased my dislike for dogs and you could hear me say “all dogs smell”.
Now I am a Mum and my husband and our son Jonas (single child) always loved dogs. Jonas often mentioned that all his friends had pets and when he was in prep we bought him a goldfish so that he wasn’t the only “pet less” child in his class.
But two years ago the topic “I want a dog” was raised again. My husband felt that with nearly 12 years Jonas was mature enough to be responsible for a dog and one day he searched in the internet “Which dog suits your family?”
The clear answer was “a whippet”
My answer was “a WHAT?” I had never heard about this breed before.
We looked it up and found characteristics such as “quite inside, loves to walk and run no smell due to thin skin, friendly and absolutely harmless”.
That all sounded ok and finally I gave in and we got in contact with a whippet breeder and applied to get a puppy. My friends at work couldn’t believe it “But you hate dogs.” “Don’t do it, the poor dog…” I had lots of sleepless nights and wasn’t sure what to think about our decision to get a dog in our family! But then we got Storm! A 12 week old brindle whippet puppy, with the sweetest personality, who can think of. That is, when I changed my attitude towards dogs (I am still scared of big dogs and don’t like big fat dogs) – but as a start I like Whippets. There is the saying that owners start to look like their dogs after some time and in our family we all look like whippets already. We all have the skinny legs and the lean body. I have now discovered that you can really love a pet and a pet shows love to you. Jonas is in high school now and I am not allowed to walk to school with him, which would be absolutely “uncool”, but I am allowed to walk the dog at least the first start of the way. I love to run with Storm and I enjoy walking her in the mornings. 18 months later we even got a second dog, a second whippet, Blitz. I still can’t believe it myself, how much I have changed, but It is never to late to change; never to late to start loving something or somebody and this applies for lots of situations in life, not only for the love towards whippets.