When you come here to Prestodog.com, you probably look around to see what new stories, articles & plain ol' chit-chat I may have thrown out for my fans to read. Right. But if you ruminate on this thought, you'll probably realize that most of the drivel you see here is about the Shetland Sheepdog.

This breed is intelligent, quick-witted, loyal and alas, quite talkative. They run, play, cavort and on occasion have disagreements togther. But this latter problem is soon resolved among themselves, and in practically no time at all they're running, playing and cavorting together agian. That's certainly not like us humans, the higher species, who've been kown to hold grudges, foster resentemnt and even hate our fellow homo sapiens for years and years on end.

We have not one, not two, not three but four Shetland Sheepdogs, also known as the Sheltie. Their names? Chronologically by age: Lyric (9), Lily (6), Declan (6) and Maggie(1). They're all sable and white and that last one, Maggie, is a bona-fide show dog. This Friday she's gonna be in a dog show down in MD; click here for details, then go to the left-hand side of the page & click on the March 2008 Specialty link. I'm not going to that show 'cause I need to go to my Real Job...you know, the one that provides the rewards (a.k.a., money) that lets us live the kind of life we enjoy. In a few weeks or so, the dog show venue will shift to outdoor parks. At that time, we'll be able to pack four, no, make that five crates in our trusty van and head out for a full day of fun and frolic.

Five crates? Oh, yeah, I sorta neglected to mentio that we have five dogs. The last one's a Collie named Dougie. He's a real good egg who thinks that he's Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians.

We buy umpteen cans of dog food, numerous bags of their kibble, go on "poop patrol" several times a week, are deleloping six-pack abs with the constant bending over to pick up their recycled food, spend time during the course of the day picking up their chewies and toys left deposited all over the house and have gone through numerous vacuum cleaners in the futile effort of trying to keep up with all the hair they constantly shed. Specifically, Kenmore, Hoover, Shark & Eureka are all brands that have given up the ghost on us. The latest vacuum we're trying is the Dyson Animal, supposedly created for the excessive hair problems we experience. Time will tell...

And, our take on the aforementioned "problems" we encounter while living with five dogs? We wouldn't have it any other way!

---