Several years ago, one of our friends was watching Ali, our little five pound apple-head Chihuahua and decided he needed a new toy. So, she took him to one of the local pet stores and let him choose his own toy.

Being a dog, one wouldn't think this would be much of a decision and he would grab the first little thing he saw. Not in this case though.

As our friend tells the story, she lifted him up to a row of small squeaky toys on a rack that she thought might appeal to him since he himself is so small. He carefully looked at and thoroughly sniffed a number of the toys and finally decided on one by gently grabbing it with his teeth. It was a six-inch tall latex orange and yellow monkey with hands and legs separated from the main body of the toy as opposed to just being printed on the body. She purchased it for him and he was one happy dog.

At home, Ali has almost a dozen little toys but that monkey has always been his favorite. One of his favorite games is having his toy put under a blanket or cover and then digging it out. If no one was available to play with him and his monkey, he would bury the monkey in the blanket and then "find" it. He would do this over and over until he finally needed a rest.

Slowly however, the monkey was disintegrating as all things do over time. First to go was the little squeak that the monkey made when Ali would either step on it or grab it in his tiny mouth.

Maybe a year later, the monkey started losing body parts. As I recall, the first parts to go were the legs. Then a while later, one of the arms fell off and not long after, the other arm disappeared. Now the monkey was left with only a head and a torso.

ell that monkey was still Ali's favorite toy. So, over the course of another year or so, the torso was also destroyed. That left Ali with only the head which was now aptly named "Monkey Head" One might think that he would done with it by this time. One would be wrong.

Ali wouldn't really play with Monkey Head any more realizing its fragile state, but he did continue to carry it around and lick it or nibble on the edges until now it is only a monkey face—as the back half of the head has also left the building.

As long as two years ago my roommate and I, realizing that the monkey was on its last legs so to speak, began searching for a new monkey for Ali. We checked all the local pet stores multiple times and they all said they had never seen a toy like his monkey.

I am usually very good at finding things on the Internet, so I probably spent in excess of ten hours total searching for another monkey, just like that one, to no avail.

Maybe I wasn't using the right search terms or maybe I wasn't being specific enough or possibly I was being too specific but I could not find another one. Finally last week I found one at some obscure website on the Internet.

I went to that site to purchase a new monkey. Out of Stock. Oh no. But, the site did have the manufacturer's name and the name of the toy itself. Armed with that information I was able to go to Ebay and find just the product I needed.

The new monkey arrived in the mail on August 21st. I waited for my roommate to get home so that she could present Ali with his new monkey.

Now dogs are generally happy as long as they are well-cared for and loved. But the joy that Ali had when he received the new monkey was just perfect.

His eyes lit up a little brighter than normal, his tail was wagging at full speed, and he was even jumping, which is much more difficult for him since he has put on a few pounds in the last few years. So I got to spend the evening playing Tug of War and Hide and Seek with Ali and his new monkey.

Right now, he is sleeping with his head next to his monkey. I'm sure when he wakes up he'll be ready to play again.

~ John Jackson