When I was very small My Mum and I watched a man walking his dog. Mum said it was a greyhound. A couple of days later we saw several dogs being walked and I took great pleasure in telling my mum that the men were walking a patch hound, a brown hound, a stripey hound, a white hound and a grey hound!

Helen D

I used to believe that my mother's cat, which was white with big black spots, got that way because she drank cow's milk when she was a kitten instead of her mother's milk. Nobody understood why I kept calling her our "cow cat."

Beastie

I misunderstood when someone used the term "I'm getting my dog spayed." I thought they said "sprayed". I, for a long time, thought that the vet sprayed on something to keep your dog from getting pregnant!

Jessica

When I was small, I had this obsession that my cat was a human, but deformed. I spent countless hours trying to make her speak,and when she meowed, I would get angry and ask her to say what I told her to. I occasionally would pester my parents, saying she needed a wheerchair because she couldn't walk on two legs, and I wanted her to get a nice haircut...

Jade

When I was a kid, I was looking at a book about dogs and I noticed the breed called Border Collie. It didn't seem to look much like any Collie that I'd known about, and I doubted that I'd ever seen a Border Collie. That all seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, since where I leved in the U.S. was nowhere near a border with either Canada or Mexico. I even thought perhaps if you had one of the more familiar kinds of Collie dogs and then moved to somewhere near a border, the dog would then grow to look like a Border Collie like in the picture I saw.

Karen

I used to believe that cats could steal our breath while we slept. Our big orange cat would love to curl up on my chest and put his face close to mine. I would always roll over onto my side so that he couldn't steal my breath.

Joanie

i used to believe that if you got barked at by a dog you would die in 45 days

woza

When I was little, I had a cat named Pepsi. I used to believe that cats grew up to be lions or tigers. And I knew even then that we wouldn't be able to keep him once he turned into a lion or tiger, so I would always (this is awful, I know) try to take his food away so that he couldn't eat and grow up, because I didn't want to have to get rid of him.

Amanda

when my older sister and i were little girls, we had a dog named Winky 'cause he had one eye. well, one day, we couldn't find him. so, to be the good sister she is, my sister told me that Winky had been flushed down the toilet. for a long time, i feared the potty.

xxxxBritxxxx

I used to belive that if you watched a dog poop and you laughed at it, it would be so embarassed it would never poop in public again.

Toni & Nikki

my dad always said his "dogs" were tired (meaning his feet),so when I was around 3, I thought my dad's feet really were dogs. my mother has pictures of me talking to and playing with my dad's feet.

stephanie

A cousin was at my house one day to see our two cats. She said that she wanted a cat. I told her that if they had babies, we would give her one. She told me,"Two girl cats can't have babies!" I thought they were just like on Jurassic Park, where the dinosaurs changed sexes and had babies!

me

My mother recently told me that I believed our dog was highly intelligent and mimicked human behavior. I thought this because oftentimes when I was sitting on the floor playing, he would come up behind me, rear up on his hind paws, and drape his front legs over my shoulders. I thought he was hugging me as an expression of his affection and had learned this from watching us. I don't think an explanation is needed as to what he was actually doing... Lord only knows how my mother didn't laugh in my face when I proudly informed her the dog had hugged me again!

Meg

I used to believe that the dog on Sesame Street was real. Can you imagine- a 6 foot tall dog? Not only that, but I even asked for one for Xmas.

Megan

i used to believe that my aunt robin drowned my dog muffin. my family lived in california and the fleas were so bad we sent muffin to live with my aunt in illiinois. when my mom told me muffin died i had dreams that my aunt tied a rock around her neck and threw her in the lake. it was actually a dog illness going around that killed her but my aunt still has the letter i wrote her at age 7 forgiving her for killing my dog.

Kelly

When i was around 5 or 6 years of age, I discovered my pet poodle locked in coitus with the neighbors mutt. The were yelping and squealing and joined at the behind. I ran screaming to my mother and she told me that they were stuck together with chewing gum!!!

Myra

i had a friend that thought that you could baptize cats. IT DOESNT WORK VERY WELL

Anon

When I was a kid, 7 or so, the neighbor boys told me that when a dog laid upside down it would suffocate. Consequently I awoke a dog and never let it lie on its back.

Denise

When i was about 6 it became apparent that I was allergic to cats. We had a siamese which me and my little sister loved very much. The memories are blurred thanks to age, but my parents told me that 'we gave to pussy to a nice couple in country'. When I was old enough I realized that the cat was put to sleep. I used to tell the story sometimes as an example of the classic tale of pets vs. allergy. When I was about 30, I talked with my folks about the cat, and they told me that actually the cat _was_ donated to a nice couple in the country and they had pictures to prove it. Double standards seem to be sometimes created by your own mind.

Anon

When I was a little girl, I used to chew on my hair. Dunno why, I just did. And we've always had plenty of pets, particularly cats. So to get me to stop chewing my hair, my dad took me to our hallway and pointed to a hairball one of our cats had thrown up and told me, "If you keep chewing on your hair, you'll throw up hairballs like the cats."

Needless to say, I never chewed on my hair again.

Rose