A dog by any other name.

Everybody has cute little nicknames for their kids.  Most people have nicknames for their animals; Cara, our dog, has several.  She is an Italian Volpino, volpino is Italian for little fox, she looks the part. Her name had to be Italian so we named her Cara-Mia, Cara for short. She does many things, some we like and some not so much. One such is licking the plates in the dishwasher (before being washed), we then call her Pre-rinse. Her favorite thing is a bully stick, it looks something like a cigar, when she has chewed enough on one end she likes to put the other end in her mouth and walk around the house, we call her Winston (after Churchill).  To say Cara is neurotic is to put it mildly; she is constantly afraid we are going to leave her so when she see us getting ready she is Velcro; yup, like glue. She stands up on her hind feet for long periods of time, usually to beg, she is now Care-Bear. When she has done something bad I usually call her......well, let's just skip that part.  Harry our cat is black so sometimes we call them ebony and ivory, just to prove we are not racist.  By the way, Harry likes to ride in the back!