As a child and growing up, because we lived in the busy city and times were difficult through the Great Depression, I never had a pet of my own.  But my brother, Hank, was very fond of cats.  In fact, Hank was in to cats.  He had one that had a litter of kittens.  When he went to bed at night, the cat and her kittens would crawl into bed with him.  Mother wasn't very happy about that.

An event occurred  that finally ended the cats sleeping with Hank. On one particular night, he rolled over in his sleep on he kittens and the following morning two of them were dead.  That ended the cats sleeping in bed with him.  But we still had cats as his pets.  No more bed fellows!

Many years later, after I was married, there were many cats and dogs that were our pets while living on the farm.  One of the pets that I remember was a black and brown fox terrior dog.  He had a habit of chasing after the tractors.  On one particular day, my husband Golden was mowing hay south of the house.  Our terrior came up missing.  We looked around, finding a lot of blood.  We followed the trails of blood, but were not able to find our dog.

Three days later he showed up on the doorstep dragging his right back leg.  He was hungry and in pain.  He had apparently been in the south field in the alfalfa when the mower cut his leg.  Of course, the children were crying and upset that the dog was in pain. So we loaded him in the car and took him to the vet in Tremonton, fully expecting that the vet would have to put him to sleep.

However, the doctor assured us that he could do surgery, which he did later that afternoon.  Then the dog was kept at the vet's for three or four days and returned home.  The leg had been amputated and the hind quarter stitched up so well that it was as though the dog had been born with three legs. We couldn't even find a scar. We were amazed at how quickly he learned to run on three legs!  He lived a long life with that handicap.