Couple of QotD in one go...

Pets:

Loads. Fish and all that jazz when I was a kiddie. A tabby cat called Mickey and a Bassethound called Snoopy Cat was an absolute gem and was crazy about me. He'd pick me up at school at 3 and walk home with me. Sadly, he got an infection and died rather painfully when one of his organs got damaged, as a result of having been so skinny. Sadly enough, I was the one that found him. I must have been 10 or something.

Snoopy the bassethound was another gem. Big long dog, with very very long ears. My parents got him out of the pound when he was only 9 months. He'd already been through two homes. Not surprisingly since bassets are dogs with a big manual. Basically, when you get a basset, you adjust. This one couldn't stay home alone at all, and would dedicate his deep, baritone voice to letting everyone in the neighbourhood know he was unhappy. So he rarely ever was home alone, instead, he went everywhere with me, my brother and my mum in our Citroen 2CV.We almost lost him when he fell of some stairs and hurt his back (a common problem in dogs like these, with very long backs), but he battled through it. Moving from a flat to a "real" house when my mum and her boyfriend moved in together probably saved his life, because the stairs at the flat would have killed him. In the end, he lived until he was 14 and basically died of cancer which had grown throughout his head and body.

After that, my mum never wanted a dog again. 3 Months later we got a little black puppy called Sammie. Another 4 years later, she got joined by her half sister called Keetje. They are now 14 and 10, as mentioned before, and could not be more different in personality.

Then on to the horses... Cisco, my first pony, I bought/got when I was about 15/16 from a distant family member. He was only a yearling then. The little critter was not a bad pony at all, and I did have a lot of fun with him, but I was forced to sell him when I moved to Ireland in 97. Kind of an interesting name, considering I didn't start getting into the Cisco stuff (which makes up 95% of my job these days) until many years later.

When I moved back to the Netherlands after the Ireland episode, I fairly quickly bought my current horse, Solon. A little impulsive maybe, but I suppose I am slightly impulsive (only a little, mind, heh). I've had him for 5 years now, which means he has spent most of his life with me at this stage. He was only 2.5 when I bought him. I have backed him and brought him on myself, which wasn't always easy and I have the scars to prove it. While he's still a little git, we're so in tune with eachother it's almost scary.

Maybe in the near future I'm hoping to get a dog of my own, but I'll need to sort out dogsitting arrangements if I want to do so, since I work full time.

So that answers the "horse with no name" QotD too. His name is Solon :-]

Then the "Strike Up the Band" question.

No. I don't play any instrument and in fact, am about as a-musical as can be, much to my regret. I did try my hand at bass guitar once, but it never really materialised. In fact, I'm not even sure what happened to my bass guitar, or where it is. Ahem. I do love the sound of the bass though, probably my favourite instrument.

So for all the musical skills I don't have, I look at music all around me and make up for it by drinking in as much musical exposure as possible.