I'm not sure on the exact birthdate of Peanut, because she was adopted from the shelter and we weren't even sure of her exact age at the time -- apparently, she was about five to six months old, according to her size and the fact that she had nearly - but not quite - lost all of her puppy teeth.

I debated over adding Peanut to MyDogSpace or not, seeing as unfortunately, she can no longer be with us. When she was about two or three years old, she attacked and killed my first dog, an eight year old called Snowball. An eighteen pound maltipoo against a hundred poung German Shepherd/Gray Wolf mix really was no competition over who would win.

It was only a few days later after deciding to keep her, despite her aggression problem, that she attacked Akita while she was only two months old, although Akita was lucky enough to slip beneath a chair and get away.

I still would have loved to keep Peanut, even after this. Believe it or not, she was still an amazing dog, and she absolutely /loved/ women and children. She'd run up to a six year old kid and lick their face, giving no sign that she would soon be the same animal who would rush snarling after any other dog, as long as it was female and at least half her size.

As for men, she also had an extreme fear of almost any of them, because when we rescued her, she was nearly an inch from death, unlike her two siblings, and not just because she was sick with kennel cough, worms and just about everything else, but she had clearly taken a pretty bad beating, and according to one of the shelter employees, suggestively from a grown man with a crowbar, although the only person positive of that would be the person who did it to her, or perhaps the SPCA officers who siezed her and her littermates from him.

After that, any time a man, especially if he were wearing any form of a hat, were to lift anything that could be viewed as a weapon (for example, a ruler or just a long stick off the ground) she would go for them, I'm guessing with the thought in mind that they were going to use it on her.

I would have died of happiness if I could have kept Peanut, even if I had to build her a dog run and a large kennel outside to prevent her from trying to harm our other animals. As it was, my parents refused to risk keeping her around, not wanting to result in more attacks by her if anything were to ever go wrong, and, against my will, took her back to the shelter we had once rescued her from.

We were informed later that she was adopted by the LA Police Department as a member of the K9 unit, and although I haven't seen her since I was ten years old, I really hope she did her best. She would have been amazing at it.

Mariah was my all-time favorite dog when I was a kid. She was about eight years older than me, since my dad plucked her out of a ditch on the side of the road and brought her home.

We're not positive, but our vet guessed she was a mix of about three or four breeds, possibly german shepherd, australian shepherd, perhaps rough-coated collie, and definately gray wolf, so in actuality, perhaps this is where my "hybrid obsession" came from. I miss Riah's gorgeous howling voice.

When I was a baby, I was told that all I could really say was "Ryry", but Riah would still come running to me. She was like a second mother to me in canine-form, and I'm told that she wouldn't allow strangers around me when I was younger, either.

She developed lung cancer when I was pretty young, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that this wasn't the best dog I'd ever met. She was so sweet and affectionate, but at the same time amazingly protective and loyal.

Riff was about two years old before he came home, if I remember right. He used to be a guard dog to prevent people from breaking into a store my parents used to own, along with a few friends back in our old town. The store was called Riffraff's, which would be how Riffy got his name.

Once the store closed down, my parents friends who rescued him as a guard dog were going to take him back to the pound where they got him, as they had no other use for him.

My mom outright refused and took him home, where she already owned Puffy, Brownie (Puffy's dad) and Ziggie (the mate of my first dog, a maltipoo, and the father of my mom's dog, Tippy).

Riff was already an adult when I was adopted, although to his family, he was a 110-pound lapdog. He used to sleep underneath an old upturned metal boat in our yard.

I think some of my fondest memories of him were when he chased a bunch of teenagers out of our yard while they were trying to snoop around and steal things, as well as the time when kids would used to ride past our yard on their bycicles and tease him. My dad opened the gate once, and Riff didn't even leave the yard, but the kid was so busy looking over his shoulder to make sure that the dog didn't maul him to death, he ran his bike directly into the bumper of a parked car.

Riff also used to go in our garage. He was a great ratcatcher, and he'd jump and snap a bat in midair. I remember that, when I was a baby, I used to use him to crawl up into my bed because I was so short, I couldn't reach it, and he would always lay right at the foot of it.

Like Riah, he also got some form of cancer, but I was too young to remember what kind. We had to get him put to sleep to prevent him from suffering, and between him and Riah, I don't think there's anyone, human or otherwise, that I miss more.