Bandit, Alaska, and Kodiak had matured into lanky half grown dogs; they were almost at their full adult height but hadn't filled out their frames yet. They all had to live on chains, because when they were loose, they might come in the house, and Eliyah did not allow animals of any kind in the house. Also, they often ran off and didn't return for hours. Kodiak, the most dominant pup in the litter, was easy going, friendly, and fairly quiet. He had a habit of smiling when we stopped to spend time with him. Alaska jumped and yapped constantly and had the same narrow frame and head he'd always had. Bandit was just as bad. I simply could not control him. He was always friendly to me, but the minute I left him and went into the house, he'd start barking obnoxiously, relentlessly. My parents told me that I had to discipline him since he was my dog, and told me to hit him with a stick. I beat my dog until his muzzle bled, and still he barked whenever I left him. I felt horrible about it and powerless to make him shut up, and still they yelled at me whenever he barked.

Our neighbor kept laying hens, and he complained that dogs were getting into his henhouse. On one occasion, we had kept Sheba indoors that night, yet the neighbor swore up and down that he had seen her killing his hens. Black dogs are fairly generic, especially in poor light, and Sheba had no distinctive markings. The culprit could have been a black lab, or any black dog, but our dogs were nearby, and they were in the habit of running, so they got blamed first. One day all of the dogs ran off. When Sheba returned, she was a mess- looked like she'd been into a fight. And, she was pregnant again. We wondered if she'd been bred by coyotes; there was simply no way to know what the sire was, which would make finding homes for them that much more difficult.

There were hordes of cats, none of them mine. Coco and Muffin had kittens at a steady pace. Coco's were always strong, beautiful, and healthy while Muffin's tended to be sickly and lackluster. Mom had gotten a Siamese male, Alexander, and he and Coco (who was part Siamese herself) had strikingly gorgeous kittens that found homes easily.