Puppy Pictures

My daughter and I walk dogs at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley. We used to go every single Sunday, as part of a regular set of rounds. We stopped for a while, but lately we've been going again.

We do this because my daughter loves animals. She has never met one she doesn't love. She loves horses, cats, rats, parrots, dolphins, cows, deer, monkeys, snakes, ferrets, goats, spiders, ducks, lemurs, elk, and all the others. The only possible exception is bees.

But she loves dogs best of all. The pup she's holding in the above photograph is a Humane Society dog named Penny.

Unfortunately, my wife is allergic to dogs. Her dermatologist gave her a test. And that's where volunteering at the Humane Society came in: it's a means of feeding our daughter's passion for dogs without having to actually get one.

For a couple of years, it worked. But lately she and her brother have been making a lot of noise about getting a dog of their own. I am unofficially on their side, although I am also a pragmatist.

Our daughter checks available dogs on the Humane Society web site (www.boulderhumane.org/) on a regular basis. Almost every day she finds a dog she has to have. A few days ago she saw a litter of dachshund puppies – and it was love at first sight.

Pound puppy

They were still there when we visited on Sunday.

These pups are cute, there's no denying that. What puppies aren't? My daughter got into the kennel with them and they jumped all over her, yap yap yapping and wagging their little tails. None of them were any bigger than my shoe.

Puppies at the Humane Society get snapped up pretty quickly, for obvious reasons. They aren't free, though, and these particular pups are unusually expensive – four hundred bucks apiece. They must be purebreds. That price is about four times the average price for other dogs.

Not that we seriously considered getting one.

Meanwhile, my daughter's love for all animals continues unabated.

For now, we remain a dogless household. My wife says she'll get the allergy test again.

And then maybe – just maybe...