I had different pets in my childhood

I never had a pet of my own but we had several family pets during my growing up years. When I was little I remember my mom’s dog Skipper who had about 20 puppies. We had other dogs, too. When we moved to St Paul Street I don’t know what we did with the dogs but they didn’t go with us, except for Buster. He was part German Shepherd, part Collie, I think, and supposedly part wolf. He was everyone’s best friend at our house. One time, when Sylvia was three or four, our neighbor boy, about the same age, had come over. He was riding his trike and chasing Sylvia around the yard. All of a sudden Buster grabbed him by the seat of his pants and stopped him from moving. He ran home crying, “Buster bit me!” There was not a mark on him because Buster only caught his clothes. Another interesting story was when someone came to our home while we were gone. He’d been there several times and thought he would just come into the house, which was never locked, to wait for us. Buster barked and growled and wouldn’t let him in.. Not too long after that some of Dad’s relatives came while we were at church. When we got home they were inside waiting for us. Dad was shocked that Buster let them in. He either recognized them as family or he knew who to trust and who not. When we moved from St Paul Street, after 8 years, we left Buster behind. Dad figured he was too old and too independent to move with us.
Another dog we got, that we did take with us, was Nina. Speedy had gotten her while he was working in the forest service. She was a Brussels Griffon, a very tiny dog with short light brown hair. He got her when she was a puppy and she was constantly picking at Buster. If he got tired of it he would just walk away. He never hurt her. Speedy left for college the fall after he brought her home so she became our dog. We lived in Arizona when she got pregnant. Our neighbor was very worried that she’d have one or two puppies and it would kill her. But when the time came for her puppies to be born there were 6 tiny puppies. Daddy could hold all of them in one hand at the same time. One died, and four we gave away. We kept one but I can’t remember his name. He was a black and white fur ball, who grew to nearly twice the size of his mama. A few years later, after we had moved to Washington again, Nina got sick and died.
My mom also had Parakeets while I was growing up. The first one I know of was Roscoe. He was a very fun bird. Mom was teaching him to say “pretty baby” when Sylvia angrily corrected her. She said, “That’s not a baby, I’m your baby. That’s a bird!” One time, when my cousin Susannah was visiting she heard a wolf whistle as she walked into the kitchen. She asked which of my brothers had whistled at her and didn’t believe them when they said it was Roscoe; especially because he wouldn’t do it again. We had a game, similar to checkers, called Teko. Whenever anyone tried to play the game Roscoe would fly down and push the pieces onto the floor. He loved to fly free. Once he was on the floor and someone accidentally stepped on his tail and pulled out most of his tail feathers.
My mom had a few other birds over the years, including one named Teko. After I was married Dad gave her a bird. She was trying to figure out what to name it. Dad was always trying to convince us kids to name a son Guy, so Frank suggested Mom name the bird Guy, which she did. Daddy got his Guy and he never bugged us about using that name again.