It's been so much fun reading this that I feel I should share a little too! I'm Kathryn, the technologically-challenged poster who can't figure out how to work a digital camera to share a photo of Allie, our current cairn. Trust me - she is gorgeous! (But aren't they all?)
I'm 56, and work full-time doing fund-raising and marketing for a nonprofit human services agency. I'm also a potter, and I spend a lot of time in my studio making functional stoneware, which I sell at sales and art crawls. My hubby Steve, 62, is a lawyer. We live in a Victorian house a few blocks from the Mississippi River gorge, and have managed -- over 25 years -- to cover our entire yard and the boulevards too in perennial gardens.
Allie, our red brindle cairn, is 8. She's currently our "only child," though I had a cat I adored who I lost about a year ago to cancer. Before Allie, we had Annie for 14 years. As Steve says, they came with different "operating instructions." Annie was so mellow, so attached to us, so cuddly. Allie is all about motion and having her own way. She cuddles when she wants to, not when I want her to. Definitely alpha, definitely a challenge. Her best friend is Walter the border collie, who lives down the block with our good friend Bette. Bette is retired and travels often to see grandkids or just to have fun, so we get Walt whenever she is gone. This year, because she was giving support to elderly in-laws, we had him almost two months. Walt -- who actually is probably must smarter than Allie -- nevertheless obeys her every command. He does complain to me though. He'll bark, for instance, when Allie has taken all of the rawhide chewies and made a nest of them, chewing one, while Walt has none and doesn't dare try to take one. I'm glad I have Walt too because otherwise, seeing all the cute pups on this site, I'd probably weaken and get a second cairn.