When I was pretty young, my family got what was called a toy apricot poodle (“toy” referring to her size and “apricot” to her expected color, though she wound up not being apricot after all). My dad threatened to name her “Cat” but we ultimately settled on the pretty obvious “Bo Peep.” She was a cute little dog with a lot of personality.

More than once she was run over (accidentally) by bicycles, and once my mother accidentally slit her throat while grooming her (thankfully she just buttonholed the skin). She loved popcorn and would pretty much maul you to get a piece of bread. She could do some of the basic tricks on command and would also dance (twirling around in a sort of hopping circle) if you twirled a treat above her head.

She lived to be 17 or 18 years old, and by the end, she was pretty well blind and she had a sickly sweet odor about her. I believe my dad finally put her down while I was away at college.

The pictures below show her mostly at a cute phase of her early life in 1982, though in the one shot from 1989, she looks sort of evil, guarding that horrible 70s couch alongside some handsome devil, mostly out of frame, sporting a fashionable pair of what were then called jams.