While Riding in the Car

Passing a pet store, the girls and I see a sign.

BEAGLE PUPPIES!

We already have one dog, Hershey, who is part beagle/part Sheltie, and although he is dumber than a bag of hammers, we are very fond of him. We all love his bark that goes "Baroooooo! Baaaarroooooo!" whenever he sees a squirrel.

We also have another dog, a Jack Russell terrier, who manages to tolerate the vagaries of our beagle boy, although if a dog could ever make that tsk-ing sound with her tongue and heave a sigh of exasperation, she would, watching him cower in fear as a leaf falls from a tree and slowly spirals through the air. Her name is Wimzie. "Tell me again why you stuck me with this freak," she communicates to me as we walk along through the neighborhood, smellin' all the smells and chattin' up the rabbits.

So we all love dogs in this house, and if we had a yard that was bigger than a postage stamp, and if that bigger yard had a fence around it and came equipped with a person who would automatically pick up each pile of poop with a pooper-scooper the minute it touched the grass, I would get another dog. Maybe three more.

But try telling this to Aisling, who whined in that penetrating nasal tone that makes my spine go rigid. "Why can't we get another dooooog? We have roooooom. Our house is biiiiiig. I would take caaaare of it and you wouldn't ever have to. It would be a small one! And it wouldn't be that expensive."

"Because we have enough dogs....No, we don't...No, it isn't that big....No, you wouldn't and yes, I most certainly would...Not small enough for me and yes, it would be expensive. It would need shots and food and heartworm medicine and flea and tick medicine and it would probably need prednisilone for skin allergies and it would probably have dental problems and ear mites and no."

"But whyyyyyyyy?" she continued as my shoulders hunched up around my ears. "It would be fuuuun! You'd love it! We could take it with us, places. It could wear a bandana."

I was suddenly struck with inspiration. "Aisling," I said. "Aisling, I want an Hermès handbag."

"A whatsit whosit?"

"An Hermès handbag. Not a very big one. I'd like an Hermès handbag because although I have some other handbags, I don't have an Hermès handbag. I have a big closet, so it would fit right in. I'll carry it on my arm and never make you hold it while I unlock the front door."

"Huh?" she said.

Warming to my subject, I continued, "And it wouldn't be expensive! Just something over $10,000, but that's a one-time cost and I'm sure that the dogs, all told, have cost us at least that much. Especially the time Hershey ate part of that dead bird and had to be on three different sorts of antibiotics."

"Ten thousand dollars for a purse??!!"

"I could take it to all kinds of different places."

"Ten thousand...??!!"

"Just a small one!"

"What do you need with a ten thousand dollar purse? You've already got some purses."

"What do you need with another dog? You've already got some dogs."

"Mommy, you are so not fair. Just not fair at all."