Well, ours is a pretty weird story. We had tried to adopt a mexican street dog months and months prior and that is when we found my husbandito is allergic to dogs (and cats). The kids (14, 13, 9 and 7 now) really wanted a dog and in the 3 days we had Luna (our attempt to adopt a Mexican street dog) we fell hard for her. I was shocked at how easy it was to fall in love with an animal. I looked a hypoallergenic dogs and found that not only was there no way we could afford one, but they really didn't exist here in Mexico. Last November some missionaries arrived at our colony and they were (hobby?) breeding Yorkies. My kids fell in LOVE with the puppies (they were born at the end of November) and visited them daily. The breeders wanted $1200USD for the puppies though and there was just no way.
The missionaries, however, were very intent on converting our family (we're athiest but honestly, I don't care what the kids believe, I'll support anything) to Christianity and decided in February to "infuse" one of the puppies with the "holy spirit" and gave him to us - thinking the dog would bring us around to Christianity. (where is that confused shrugging icon?
)
At any rate, we're still atheist, but very much in love with the puppy. We called him Kilo as he weighed about a kilo (now he's 2-3 I think) and while I always envisioned myself with a very short-haired street dog, much much larger than a Yorkie, we're all very much in love.
And so far dog ≠ god.