Did you know that May features National Pet Week? This is a week to appreciate pets for all the love, affection and respect they show us throughout the year.

In preparing for this holiday, I paused (paws-ed?) to reflect upon my own experience with how pets have moved from a service position to becoming a part of the family. When I was a child in rural North Carolina, my father bought some beagles as hunting dogs.

Well, because Dad had neither the time (he was a physician) nor the inclination to hunt, the beagles became backyard pets.

And the beagles, being a bit like bunnies, reproduced to give us several generations of "non-hunting" yard beagles. We also had many indoor-outdoor "alley cats" that just came and went at will.

The first indoor-dwelling pet we had was a 6-month-old Skye terrier that my older sister's boyfriend bought as a gift for her. This dog, unfortunately, came with a menagerie of behavioral problems.

I, being the youngest of six kids, was expected to deal with these problems. After all, the older children went off to college, but my parents, the pets and I remained.

Our next pet was an Irish setter named Fonz (this was during the Happy Days era). Fonz was the runt of an accidental litter. He was not expected to live at birth, but we bottle-fed him and cared for him until he became the biggest pup in the litter.

He lived to 15 years of age and kept my parents company after all us kids flew the coop. I'd say that Fonz was our first full-fledged house pet. Every night, he slept on the floor next to their bed, and every weekend, he went with my parents to our lake house. At age 10, he even survived one of the earliest pioneer bloat (i.e., gastric dilation) surgeries.

I'm sure my stories are similar to those of many of you, where your pets moved from yard-dog and alley-cat status to living in the home and becoming a full member of the family.

With one out of three American households today owning a dog or cat, almost 90 percent of people surveyed say they consider their pet's health care as important as their own.

People want the best health care for their pets — so have them examined by a veterinarian at least every six months.