For most of my life, I’ve wanted a dog. I didn’t care what kind of dog it was. Big or little, short hair or long hair; it didn’t matter to me. All I wanted was to experience the fun, the companionship, and the unconditional love and affection that I knew only a dog could bring.

Birthdays and Christmases came and went. No puppy arrived. You see, my mother wasn’t what you would call a "Dog Person." She wasn’t a "Cat Person," either. In fact, anything with fur was banned from our house. She was more of a "Goldfish Person." In my mother’s defense, goldfish are a lot less trouble than dogs, and they don’t chew the furniture or stain the rugs. But you can’t "cuddle up" to a goldfish or play "catch" with him. But there was no arguing with her. So, I resigned myself to a dog-less childhood.

My father, on the other hand, was an avid dog lover. He decided to tempt Fate one day and brought a little Chihuahua puppy home. He had found him lost and wandering around our neighborhood. Whatever possessed him to do this, when my mother had long ago made it crystal clear where she stood on the "dog subject," was beyond me. But through the door my father came, holding that little brown-eyed angel, whose face I remember in detail to this day. I also remember in detail, his little brown tail wagging fiercely, as my father whisked him right back out the door, my mother having just announced (with earsplitting volume), "Either he goes or I go!" I guess you could say that I owned a dog for about a minute and a half. Fate plays cruel tricks.

Until recently, my husband fell somewhere in the middle between the "Dog People" and "The Rest of the World." He was what you’d call a "Conditional Dog Person." That means, he loved dogs as much as the next dog lover, but on the condition that the dog resided in the next dog lover’s house. He was perfectly satisfied to love dogs "from a distance." He lavished love and attention on all the neighborhood dogs, threw sticks for them to fetch, spoiled them silly with doggie treats (that he kept in our kitchen cabinet), and then sent them happily on their way to wreak havoc somewhere else.

"It’s just like being a grandparent," he’d say. "You have all the fun with them and then you get send them right back home. It’s like having the best of both worlds!"

Over the years, there was always some reason for our family to not own a dog. The apartment we rented when we were first married didn’t allow them. Our sons arrived unexpectedly soon and our lives seemed too busy for one. We just bought new rugs or some new piece of furniture that we didn’t want ruined by one. It just never seemed like the "right time."

That’s not to say that we didn’t have pets. It’s just that the pets we did have were always confined to a hutch, a cage, or an aquarium. And so, numerous rabbits, hamsters, birds, guinea pigs, frogs, and fish found comfortable lodging in our home.

But, suddenly, the "right time" arrived. Our younger son left for college and our house was as cold and lonely as a jail cell. No cries, no little pitter-patter of footsteps and no little hungry mouths to feed. No purpose. My heart longed to take care of someone or something. My maternal voice was screaming louder than a colicky baby.

One night, I gingerly brought up the subject of getting a puppy.

"NO!" my husband said. "Absolutely not! Do you know what a dog would do to our lives? We’d be stuck home taking care of it. He’d ruin everything we own. We just got our freedom back!" (It’s funny how one person’s "freedom" is another person’s "bondage.") "We may as well just have another baby, for Heaven’s sake!" he said.

"Okay, I said. Let’s have another baby then."

A week later, we had a puppy. A 2-pound, 3-ounce little speck of a Yorkshire Terrier came into our lives with the energy of a toddler, the guts of a bungee jumper and the spunk of a bar room brawler. We named him "Rocky."

For the first few days, my husband was "lukewarm" toward Rocky and somewhat skeptical. I felt like I was the puppy’s defense attorney, my husband having branded him "guilty until proven innocent."

"You’d better get him used to that crate," he advised. "If he has an ‘accident,’ you’d better let him know about it," he warned. "We’ve got to show him who’s ‘boss’ around here, right away, or we’re going to have a big problem on our hands."

But as the week progressed, things began to change. I observed that my husband was spending more and more time with Rocky. I knew something was up one day, when I found him leaning over Rocky, with one of his "good" socks hanging from his teeth, playing "tug o- war" at 5 o’clock in the morning. A couple of days later, he came back from the grocery store with not one, not two but three "doggie toys" for Rocky.

"This one is supposed to promote healthy teeth," he read from one of the toy packages.

Promote healthy teeth? This is from a man who once looked into his son’s mouth and said, "His bite looks fine to me. Do you really think he needs braces?"

"He seemed to like my slippers this morning, so I got him a pair of his own," he said.

A pair of his own? He hasn’t bought himself a new pair of slippers since the 1980’s!

"I think I’ll get a new light for the side door, so Rocky can see what he’s doing out there when it’s dark."

It just occurred to the man to buy a new light? I’ve been asking him to replace that light for at least half a decade now. Last night, he had Rocky out there at 2:30 in the morning. This, mind you, is the same man who made me prove to him that I was in labor, before he got dressed in the middle of the night, to take me to the hospital. This is also the same man who used to offer me bribes to take the "midnight feeding," before our sons started sleeping though the night.

My husband is documenting every milestone of Rocky’s infancy, with the accuracy of a news reporter. And, for some reason, he feels the need to impart every single detail to me, if I neglected to witness it firsthand.

He bemoans the fact that I missed Rocky "lifting his leg up for the first time" to pee. He called me on my cell phone to tell me, with incalculable enthusiasm and pride, that Rocky "barked for the first time." You would have thought that the dog barked the words, "Da-Da" for him.

He never tires of giving me dissertation-length reports of the antics that go on in the backyard, when the two of them are out there alone. He described Rocky’s "first chase after a bird" as if he were describing a game-winning home run in the final game of The World Series. Rocky’s "dig for his first blood-worm" could have landed him a role in a National Geographic documentary, the way he told it. And the first time Rocky "begged for a biscuit" would surely have gotten him an Oscar Nomination, as far as my husband is concerned.

But I knew that my husband had really gone over the edge the other morning, after he had taken Rocky out for his usual a.m. romp.

I was awaiting the usual sounds of the two of them returning; the back door opening, Rocky’s bell, and the eager bark, in anticipation of his "puppy treat." But no such sounds were heard on this particular morning. Instead, I was startled by Joe’s voice and Rocky’s face peering in at me through our bedroom window.

"Tell Mommy what the Baby did!" my husband exclaimed with absolute glee. "Tell Mommy that the Baby did Snoopies and Pipples outside, like a good boy."

Snoopies and Pipples?

Good God! "Dr. No" had somehow transformed into "Dr. Doolittle."

The breeder gave us a two-week trial period, in which to decide whether we want to keep Rocky or not. "Money back, no questions asked," she said. "Just bring the dog back in the same condition as you got ‘em."

There’s not doubt whatsoever that I want to keep Rocky. I wonder, though, if she’ll take my husband instead?