About Scout and Emily

Scout and Emily are best friends. Emily is a Route 66 author, photographer and activist and is Webmaster of several Route 66 sites, including springbreak66.com, route66motels.com, and route66food.com.

Scout is a demolition expert, exterminator and home security specialist.

Scout is a rat terrier. Isn't she cute? Unfortunately, she's also very hard to get along with sometimes. When Emily adopted Scout, she didn't know anything about rat terriers. Scout had her paws full, trying to educate Emily about the proper care and feeding of terriers.

Emily lived in an apartment when she adopted Scout, and she thought Scout would make a good roommate because she was so little.

Wrong! Rat terriers are little, but they're very feisty, very smart, and very high-octane. They need a lot of exercise, and they can be stubborn, especially when they disagree with their owners about how they should behave. They're great pets if you have room for them to run and time to spend training them and giving them lots of exercise. If you don't have a lot of time to spend with your dog or a lot of room for him to play, you probably shouldn't get a rat terrier.

If you decide to adopt a puppy, you should read about a lot of different breeds and try to find one that matches your lifestyle. There are lots of good Web sites that can help you. Don't make the mistake of adopting a puppy without finding out whether it will be really happy living with you. Scout and Emily love each other a lot, but it took them several years to learn to get along, because Emily didn't learn enough about rat terriers before she adopted Scout.

Scout and Emily live with Emily's husband, Ron, and their sidekicks, Jason, a retired racing greyhound, and Songdog, a collie mix who wandered into the driveway and adopted Ron one afternoon. (Jason doesn't like to ride in the car, and Song is too big and rambunctious to stay in motels, so the boys usually go to camp while Scout and Emily and Ron are on road trips. Jason and Songdog don't mind, because the girls at camp love them and always give them lots of extra attention.)