No More "Highest Love"

Kuialoha is no more.  Well, no more in our home anyway.  On Saturday she bit Tank hard enough to draw blood and leave a nice bruise.  And that was it.  In an instant, she was no longer my dog, she was a traitor to the family.

Rob isn't heartless, like me, so he tried to get me to agree to keep her, work on more training with her.  I said, "That's fine if you want to keep her.  On Monday, when you come home from work, the dog will be gone, dropped off at the nearest Pound."  He got the point.  (Women are jerks, and I'm no exception.  There are just no two ways to see some issues.)  Happily, we found someone to take her so she didn't go to the Pound.

And I liked Kui!  Really, I did.  She was a fun little creature, and a nice lap dog who kept me warm on Winter days.  But she was randomly aggressive, attacked other dogs, and occasionally bit my kids.  That's just not cool.

Instantly, when the announcement was made, the kids started asking for new pets.  Can we have Cleo back?  NO.  Can we get a new dog?  No.  Can we get another cat?  No.  How about we put up our fish tank again?  And put it where, exactly?  That's a no.  Finally we worked our way to a betta fish.  They're pretty, nearly zero work, and they can live in 2 inches of water.

Except it turns out that they aren't really supposed to be kept in such little bowls.  To be humane (not to insult anyone who owns a betta and keeps it in a 1/2 gallon tank), you should keep it in at least a 5 gallon tank.  Well, we don't HAVE a 5 gallon tank.  I was just going to ignore the "that's torture" response I initially had, and put the betta into a large vase we have.  But I just couldn't do it.  We brought up the vase and it now has a plant coming out the top, but no cool betta. 

So what did we do?  We put this back up:

It's our 20-gallon tank.  We bought it in 2004 and took it down in 2008.  It's been sitting downstairs ever since, waiting for the right moment.  Right now there's no fish in it, if you're looking for fish.

This is in our living room, where our TV used to be (see?  No TV in the corner!).  We don't watch much TV any more, and so a year ago I tried to convince Rob to put the TV downstairs in the toy room.  He wasn't having it.  But then, a few days ago, when we were thinking about the fish tank, Rob said, "How about we put the TV downstairs?"  I just looked at him.  "You know I suggested that a year ago, right?"  He shrugged.  "I'm slow."

There you have it.  Traded a dog for some fish and a plant.

(P.S.  This is how sad the kids were about seeing Kui go.  Rob asked if fish was an ok trade for a dog.  Miciah responded, "Fish are better."  Clearly, no one was shedding tears around here.)