This is a picture of my very first Shar-Pei.  Her name is Bear and she owned a huge chunk of my heart and to this day still does.  She was given to me by a person that I worked with.  I didn’t really even know her except through work and then very little at that as she worked on one floor and I worked on another.  One day she came up to me and told me:  “I have two puppies left, a male and a female.  Which one do you want?”  I told her I didn’t want or need a puppy.  She said that’s not what I asked you, I asked you which one do you want.  I told her I already had a male at home so I couldn’t bring another boy into the house (duh, my male was a neutered cocker spaniel).  She told me okay then I bring the female to you on Saturday.  Nothing more was said and five days later, she arrived at my front door, rang the doorbell and when I opened the door, she handed me the puppy and said to me “She is a gift from your mother.”  She pulled the door shut and left me standing in the foyer with this little black Shar-Pei puppy, which I did not want, did not need.  My housekeeper had just cleaned my house and I wasn’t about to put the puppy down and have her pee all over my clean white tile floors, so I sat down in my rocking chair with her.  She immediately laid her head on my chest and we both fell asleep.
My youngest son, Chuck, came home from baseball practice a couple of hours later and thought she was the neatest dog.  She looked like a little black bear cub, hence her name.  Chuck and Bear began playing on the living room floor.  He was laying on a big floor pillow and she would come over and attack him.  He would pick her up like a sack of potatoes and throw her over him.  She would roll and race around the house and circle him a few times before attacking him again, and the process would repeat itself.  I had lost my mother the year before to cancer and was still grieving heavily for her and had not really laughed since she had gotten sick.  Bear gave me back the gift of laughter.  No one could have witnessed her antics and not laughed. 
During the course of Bear’s short life (she died shortly after she turned 6 of liver cancer), she saved my life 2 times.  I am a diabetic, and my glucose level had dropped dangerously low in the middle of the night.  Bear woke me and insisted that I get up.  I thought she was in distress and needed to go out, so I got up and tried to let her out.  She wouldn’t go out; she kept pushing me towards the kitchen counter where my test kit was.  I was feeling really icky and very light-headed, so I tested my blood sugar and it was at level 42.  Its not supposed to get below 70.  I immediately sat down and ate something and then went back to bed.  Bear slept in the bed next to me with her head on my chest for the rest of the night.  I miss her every day.

Pam