Finally, I found my dog, Nikita, a massage therapist and made her an appointment at Barker & Meowsky, Inc. [I didn�t �get� the name until I said it out loud. My mind, and I am proud of this, isn�t programmed to detect cutesy.]

I fear Nikita will be out of her league, though. She is used to being treated like, well, a dog � as opposed to a human. She shits outside, she eats out if bowl on the ground, and she thinks ripping the stuffing out of a $5 plush dog toy and finding a carelessly discarded half-eaten snack on the street is �neat.�

She doesn�t have her own bedroom (like her soon-to-be massage therapist's two pugs apparently do), she doesn�t wear nail polish, use fancy shampoo, wear rain slickers outside, have a driver to pick her up for daycare, or find the need for some aromatherapy after a particularly stressful day of sleeping and staring out the window.

In my research for this freelance article on pet massage, I am discovering that there are quite a few dogs and cats in this world that are treated better than I am.

Take for example, pet owner, Mrs. X, who hired a driver to take her dog to an aromatherapy session. The reason? Her pet was having "a bad day" because his friend, also a dog, had failed to say hi to him.