We sure do love our dog Twinkie. She's a Golden Retriever/Chow mix who's just about to turn two years old. Twinkie was rescued from a sewer on Christmas Eve of 2001 and has been part of our life ever since. When she was just a little puppy, she used to get herself into all sorts of trouble. One day we put her in the bathroom while we both went off to school and work. When we got back, there was a scene of carnage outside of the bathroom door. Hundreds of shreds of toilet paper sat outside the door, and she had somehow managed to squeeze what was left of the roll -- cardboard tube included -- under the door. And there, sticking out just as innocent as could be, were two little Twinkie paws.

Now that she's all grown up, Twinkie has settled down quite a bit, though she still gets very excited around new people or animals. She loves going to visit her good friends Munchkin and Tonka, neither of which is quite as excited to see her. But as energetic as Twinkie is now, it's hard to believe that at one point she was so tiny that she couldn't even go down stairs by herself. She had to be carried like a baby so that she could go on walks outside. Still, it was much easier carrying her little 8-pound form then, unlike her current 65-pound hulking figure.

Unbeknownst to many, Twinkie is a bona fide movie star. She made her film debut in the 2003 short Tyler's Ball, in which she portrayed Dog #2. She had to lie next to a bench looking tired, and then jump up and chase a ball up and down a street. Even though she was very hot and fatigued by the end of the six-hour-long shoot, she was a trooper. She always performed on cue and didn't even complain when the hard sidewalk tore a hole in one of the pads on her paws. The film was screened before a packed theater of movie-goers, and Twinkie was rightly hailed as the star of the entire evening (by her family, at least).