At our house, pets are family too. After the loss of the dog that my husband and I bought on a Sunday whim at the flea market in Raleigh when we were young and dating (the same dog who appears in our wedding pictures, the one who greeted our newborns when we brought them home from the hospital for the first time, the one who stayed on constant watch near their cribs and then their strollers and then their tricycles and then their bikes after they ditched the training wheels), our hearts were shattered.