I just read Andy Tarnoff's blog about Mojo -- I'm prayin' for him -- and it made me think about my dogs.

Anyone who can read between the lines in Milwaukee media will already know -- via another publication -- that my two standard poodles have turned our home -- and especially our garden -- upside down. We bought a house at least in part because we wanted dogs.

My wife and I both grew up in dog houses and keeping a pet rabbit in Brew City apartments wasn't really a long-term solution to our pathetic glomming onto other people's pooches.

So, we bought a house, raised a fence and started gardening. Then we got Paris from a standard poodle rescue (I know, I know, insert joke here).

He was a nervous wreck. He'd come from a house overrun with kids who ran him down. They said he didn't like men and he shivvered and peed all over the floor the first time I approached him at the rescue. But I turned him around and he became the first being on this Earth that appeared to worship me.

Soon after, we got Paris a dog. Hope came from the same poodle rescue (no, not located in a Bloomingdale's) and she didn't bark or close her eyes (even when sleeping) for months after she arrived.

Between the two of them, they stomp on and urinate on our bushes and keeping them out of the vegetable garden and away from the fences where the neighbors' dogs rage at them isn't easy. They bark at every man, woman, child, squirrel and bunny that dares to pass within 50 feet of our house.

They annoy me a few times a day, I admit. But, still, I adore them. They are sweet and smart and darn near literally bursting at the seams with personality. I can't imagine the pain I'll feel when they're gone and the dreadful, dreadful silence that will resonate in our house, especially when the squirrels will romp, unobserved, on our lawn.