n my parents bookshelf sits a dusty stack of photo albums that visually chronicle the lives of my family up until about 2011 when Instagram started doing it for us.
In the very early editions of these albums, when my brother was four years old and I was just a toddler, there’s a very unusual third wheel in almost every photo. An enormous black Great Dane. I can remember looking at these photos as an adult and thinking how odd it was that my family had once owned a dog that was the size of a teenager when the only dog we’ve had since then was a rat masquerading as a Mini Fox Terrier. Also my father is not terribly fond of big dogs so I couldn’t figure out what on earth possessed them to get a Great Dane.
Turns out, the dog came with the house we lived in. My parents bought a small cottage in northern New South Wales in the early 80s and when they moved in with their two tiny children in tow, the dog was there. Her name was Jenny and she just lived at the house. So my parents took care of her for the year or two that we lived there.
I asked my parents what happened to Jenny when we moved to Canberra circa 1986 and my dad said that she stayed with the house. The next owner was more than happy for her to stay. Although my parents grew quite fond of her, the thought of driving a giant farm dog to Canberra to live in sub-zero temperatures just seemed cruel, so Jenny stayed with her house and allowed another family to move in and live with her. She owned the house and simply let humans come and live there with her for a while.
A friend of mine told me another beautiful story about a friend of hers who was hanging out the washing on her birthday one year and out of no where this little parrot flew out of the sky, landed on her hand as she was pegging up a t-shirt, wandered down her arm and snuggled into her neck. The woman tried to find the owner but no one claimed him so she just kept him. She’s now of those awesome bird people, who just always has a bird on her shoulder and they absolutely love each other. He just flew out of the sky and went ‘Yep! I pick you!’ and they’ve been together ever since.
I was having drinks with a few friends last week and we all started sharing our accidental pet stories and they made me feel so warm and fuzzy inside that I just had to ask my readers to share their furry tales.
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Have you ever had an accidental pet? Or has an animal ever adopted you?
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