So, How Much Do You Have to Pay Someone to Kill Off a Basketful of Cute Little Puppies?

This is my new girl, who, at present, is going by the working-title "Daisy":

Cute, huh? 10 weeks old, and she's pretty much got me wrapped around her little paw -- just forget about resisting the Power of the Puppy!

I hadn't planned on getting a baby, but a local animal rescue group came up with a brilliant strategy to get Daisy and her 6 sisters and brothers placed. They invited me to come down to a pet store where they were having an "adoption fair" to meet a 2 year-old mutt who needed a good home. When I got there, I was told that the dog "couldn't come out" that day for some reason. But there was a play-pen brimming with puppies.

The rescue people listened patiently as I went on about how at this point in my life it would be utterly impossible -- foolish, even -- for me to even consider trying to raise a puppy on my own.

Then they asked me if I wanted to sit with them for just a minute -- and they plopped me down in the middle of this mass of wriggling little bundles of fur.

I can't be sure, but it's possible a rainbow appeared at that moment. The serotonin levels spiked. And needless to say I've been cleaning up puppy-poop ever since.

At 6 weeks, Daisy and her litter-mates were rescued from a high-volume shelter just 4 hours before they were going to be put down. As Liliana wrote back in April, animal shelters have seen a surge in new arrivals resulting from the economic crash, and Daisy was among them.

You have to wonder what it says about our society that we have both the puppy-mill, and also an equally horrific industrial process to dispose of our "best friends" by the litter.