Lloyd and I have been talking about getting a dog for quite some time. He's a died-in-the-wool dog person. I'm the cat lady. He wanted the biggest dog possible--he'd had a Lab/Newfie mix named Tuxedo,and he'd get all dreamy-eyed whenever he talked about Tux. Me, I wanted something smaller and less slobbery.

So we started a ticking off of possible breeds. Lloyd: how about a boxer? Me: no, I'm not a fan of any animal with a pushed in snout. Me: How about a corgi--they're smaller and not slobbery, yet they'd bark to alert us if anything was amiss in the house? Lloyd: nope. Too small. Finally after much debate, we came to an agreement. A German Shepherd Dog (GSD).

My friend always would bring her GSD, Roy, to our house, and he really grew on me. We'd babysit him and he always liked to hang out with us. The cats weren't too thrilled with Roy, but there seemed to be a mutual interspecies respect going on, so a GSD it was to be for us. Here's Roy back in his glory days.

Roy and Lloyd discuss the merits of giving up the frisbee nicely.