The animal side of life (part 1)

A true story about a girl overcoming big obstacles to realize her dream and finding her true love.

Dogs, cats, bunny's and gerbils.

Once upon a time there was a young girl who loved animals more then anything, she loved all animals but above all she liked dogs and cats. There was only one big problem: she also was allergic to all animals with fur. Whenever she played with animals for a while she would get itchy rashes on her arms and her legs, they itched so much she couldn't help but to keep scratching them. The doctor's didn't have anything that could do anything about it and said that the only chance she had was the small possibility that she would "grow out of it" during her puberty.
But this didn't keep her from taking every chance she got to pet and cuddle animals. She was an extremely shy girl, but there was one question she had no problem asking every stranger "Can i pet your dog?". She knew all the dogs from the neighborhood, across the street lived Brutus, a big old rottweiler who was like a kind and gentle grandpa, and later there would come Shadow, a German Sheppard that was a real guard dog and Sammy, a Mastino Napolitano next door that she could pet over the fence and many others.
At home she could only have bunny's and guinea pigs who lived outside and in the winter in the shed, inside they had gold fish and parakeets, her parents liked animals as well. In the family her grandpa also liked animals very much, he mostly had many bunny's (also those Russian giants sometimes) and different kinds of birds, her other grandma had Joepie, a little mean dog that she couldn't pet or play with, he came to stay once in awhile when her grandma was away. An aunt luckily had dogs and cats as well and she loved going there. She had 2 young cats and 2 little dogs, Lilly and Puppy, that she could play with and Rocco, a big Bouvier who didn't really play but she could pet him.

When she was around 10 years old her grandma got a new little dog, Chico, this one was really fun and loved to play. After a while her grandma couldn't take care of the dog anymore and her parents decided to take Chico in, the girl was extremely happy because she loved the little playful dog allot. But because Chico was living with them the girl's rashes became worse and worse, her mother knew how much she loved the dog but felt really bad seeing her like that. Eventually they had to decide to give up Chico, he would go live with 2 elderly people that they knew in the neighborhood and sometimes they would come visit her parents shop with the little dog, her parents would always call her so she could cuddle with him for a bit.

Her dream was to become an animal carer, to work in an animal shelter, boarding kennel or petshop etc. she never had had any other ideas of what she would become when she grew up. When she was 12 she would go to junior high/high school (different school system) and they would decide on how high her education would be, she got advised for low-medium. There was a junior high greenery school, there they had classes for plant-care, florist, farmland and animal care besides the regular classes, but the education was low. Her teachers said it wasn't a good idea to go there, she should go for higher education and finding a (paid) job in animal care was next to impossible anyway. Luckily her parents understood her in wanting to go there and even though she was allergic to animals her parents stood by her side and went against the advice of the teachers to let her go to the greenery school and she started her study for animal care there.

In the first year there gerbils became a hype and when her friend had a gerbil she couldn't keep anymore the girls parents said she could try if she wouldn't get an allergic reaction with the gerbil in her room. She didn't have her allergies even though she was going to that school and came in contact with fury animals most days. After a while she still hadn't had her allergic reactions and her parents said she must've indeed grown out of her allergy. The gerbil population grew very fast, one gerbil alone was a bit sad so she got 4 others from school, the animal care teacher told her they where 4 females... unfortunately it turned out they weren't, it where two females and two males and all very healthy. It's not very easy to see the difference between male and female gerbils.
Gerbils also can start reproducing while they are still rather young, and it happened a few times the girl wasn't quick enough to separate the males from the females in the nest or missed one. It's unknown to how many gerbils exactly had been living with her, but at the most at a time there where 7 cages with 21 gerbils in total, in the end she had to get rid of all the gerbils. Because of this her mom ended up getting distraught whenever she even heard the word "gerbil" for the rest of her life, especially when the girl mentioned she would like to have gerbils again.

Seeing that the girl wasn't allergic to animals anymore, the next summer vacation, when she was 13 they decided to get a dog....and what a crazy mongrel it was!

----> to be continued