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The last thing we need in this family is a dog.

If I said it once, I have said it a thousand times.

No amount of pleading would change my mind. We are a busy household, after all, barely keeping up with the needs of three goldfish, three cats and three kids.

"We are a cat family," I declared, and everyone understood the subtext: Mom is a cat person, like her mother before her.

My husband, Jim, is a dog person who still gets misty-eyed when he talks about his childhood dog, a cocker spaniel named Buck.

I always won the argument because cats are hands-down lower maintenance than dogs. You don't have to race home from work to take them for a walk. You don't have to ship them to a kennel when you go on vacation.

"We don't need a dog," I said without a scintilla of hesitation whenever the subject came up. In an ever-more complicated world, it was one of those few issues on which I had absolute moral clarity.

Until I made the mistake of visiting my friend Michelle LeCompte in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Normally, this would never be construed as a mistake. Michelle is a dear friend from high school and a gracious hostess. Her husband and children are charming.

Unfortunately, so is their dog, a standard poodle named Apollo.

My kids went nuts for the dog.

Almost as nuts as my husband.

Suddenly I understood something with absolute moral clarity: I was standing in the way of my family's happiness.

My family needed a dog.

Last fall I gave the word to my sister Terri: Find a dog that would be right for our family. Preferably Dog Lite, certainly no Great Dane or dog that weighs more than the humans in our household.

Terri is a veterinarian who practices with College Hill Pet Clinic in Cincinnati, which often fosters rescue dogs for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Months went by, with no word. Then I got an e-mail with a picture of "Pixie," who hails from a breed with the undignified name of "rat terrier."

She had been hit by a car, her legs mangled, yet she licked the faces of her rescuers.

Who could say no to a face like that — those wise, gentle eyes, framed by ears that resembled a miniature wimple? (Think Sally Field in The Flying Nun, only cuter.)

Jim woke up the first day with the dog and raced downstairs like a little boy on Christmas morning.

After trying on several new names, we seized on Jim's idea of calling her "Addie" in honor of beloved baby sitter Addie Shultz.

For the first few days I convinced myself that Addie wouldn't cause too much disruption in our schedule. How much trouble could an 8-pound creature cause?

Think newborn, complete with toilet training and middle-of-the-night wake-up cries.

Turns out there's no such thing as Dog Lite, but Addie is worth every ounce of aggravation. She quivers with excitement when one of us comes home. She barks protectively at nefarious intruders like my Dad.

We are her people, and she is our puppy.

As I've told everyone all along, what this family needed most was a dog.

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