I’ll just say it. I’m not, um, a dog person so much.

I think some are cute. I can appreciate the love and companionship and amusement friends get from their dogs (we won’t address cats or other animals here because there is zero chance I will not offend). I take joy in seeing friends with their pets and am sad for them when they pass on to doggie heaven.

I mean, I’m not a psychopath.

We had a dog when I was growing up. Her name was Hondo and she comes to mind this week after the death of Boston Celtics’ great John Havlicek, whose nickname was “Hondo.”

With all due respect to the Hall of Famer, Hondo was a great dog name and Hondo was a great dog. I’m not altogether sure why my family chose Hondo as her name because we lived in the Chicago area and had our own NBA team whose players had their own nicknames like “Stormin’ Norman” Van Lier and “Chet the Jet” Walker. But the Celtics were popular, Havlicek was easy to like and we had an Uncle Norman, so that would have been weird.

Hondo was the perfect dog for a family with a mother who didn’t like messes, a father who didn’t like walking in the cold and a little sister who was afraid of dogs ever since I was sent to get my brother Richard from his best friend Andy’s house one day and their adult-sized Dalmatian leapt against their back fence so forcefully – and so LOUDLY – that it sent me screaming the full block back home.

I was a bit sensitive as a child.

The only other dog experience I had up until then was later relayed to me since I was a newborn at the time and could neither remember it nor probably focus on my mother’s face much less a strange dog. It was the family pet and apparently, Pepper snapped at me or at least looked at me suspiciously enough that my mother decided it had to be given away. This sent my sister screaming down the street as the new owners drove off, demanding to know why I couldn’t be given away instead of Pepper.

Poor Hondo arrived in this same home some eight years later. My mother wasn’t thrilled and agreed to keep her only after my brothers promised the dog, a sweet little mutt, would stay on the lower level of our bi-level house. In retaliation while we were out on her first Fourth of July, Hondo ran upstairs, into my parents’ bedroom and barfed into my mother’s knitting basket.

It would become a Fourth of July family tradition.

My father loved Hondo but didn’t understand dogs and in particular, their unique digestive systems. So, when he decided Hondo looked sick (not quite sure how he concluded this), he would treat her as he would one of us, by feeding her Campbells chicken noodle soup. Hondo responded as dogs do when adults feed them things that would probably be the equivalent of giving a human dog food, and we could only hope this did not happen on Fourth of July or my mother’s knitting basket would really be a mess.

Poor Hondo (which eventually became her name) was taught a series of tricks by my brothers and I. My brothers taught her to hold up her paw for a shake, roll over and fetch. I taught her to sing “Close to You” by the Carpenters.

In reality, I played a fourth-grade version of the song on piano while singing/screeching the chorus and Hondo would accompany me by howling as if in pain. I thought she was singing. In retrospect, pain probably was the right analogy to use.

Poor Hondo was very smart. She seemed to know my father didn’t like the cold, so before they left for college, my brothers trained her to run outside and do her business by herself, then run back. And she handled this really well, though my father thought she looked cold and bought her one of those dog sweaters that would rub her against the grain and I imagine felt like a human wearing burlap.

Not having a dog now isn’t directly related to all of this. I eventually figured out I was also allergic to Poor Hondo and my husband didn’t have a dog growing up. Our kids didn’t protest too much except for that brief period when Alec taped a picture of a dog onto the frame of his bunk bed along with a schedule of all the fun things he would do with the imaginary pet, which he also named, if he had one.

We’re pretty sure our son isn’t too badly damaged. We’re also reasonably sure he will one day own a couple pit bulls and ask us to dog-sit.

Before I begin, I want to come clean that I am fully cognizant of the fact that my last three blogs – four if you count this one – are about birthdays, anniversaries and death, which is not what I intended and should not be mistaken as my blog theme.

And so I promise to try to get back to other important matters like “The Bachelorette” (not watching this next one, I swear to God), the joys of spray fake butter and maybe even the NCAA Championships, men and women.

But in the meantime, I feel the need to pause and tell you about my mom today.

My mother Francine was sentimental and emotional and possessed many of the qualities that make a person a warm and loving human being. But about age, she was pretty clear.

Today, April 8, would have been her 93^rd birthday if she had not passed away 12 years ago and that statement alone, not to mention the idea of wishing her a “Happy Birthday” in my blog or on Facebook, would have made her laugh and then promptly make fun of me.

“’Happy Birthday?’” she would undoubtedly say if somehow, we could be having this conversation. “I’m not happy and it’s not my birthday.”

“I know that,” I’d reply. “I said it would have been your 93^rd birthday.”

“But I’m dead, so it’s not.”

“Fine, you’re not 93.”

She would not have loved the idea of 93 unless she was active and clear-minded and sadly, she had not fit that description for a very long time. My dad Herb, on the other hand, would have been very happy living to 110 and in whatever state was necessary to have him still be alive, because, well, he was very clear as well. Life, good. Death, bad.

This was a typical conversation in my house growing up:

“George Burns (or fill in any very old celebrity) died,” my mother would announce.

“Oh no, that’s terrible,” my father would say. “How did he die?”

“What do you mean, ‘How did he die?’ “my mother would reply. “The man was 100. He stopped living.”

I do not, however, want to leave the impression that this made her somehow uncaring. When she spoke of her four children – mostly if someone would ask who was her favorite — she would say that she loved us all in our own, very special way as the first child or oldest son and on down the line. But whenever she’d get one of us alone, she’d whisper “You’re really my favorite. Don’t tell the others.”

My mom was funny, and funny trumped all. And she never let the truth get in the way of a good story, like the one she often told about growing up with a pet goldfish, whose bowl sat on the kitchen windowsill of her family’s apartment until one day the fish, swimming round and round in the hot sun, suddenly leapt out of the bowl and “committed suicide.”

“What?” one of us would cry. “Committed suicide? It was a fish. How was that possible?”

“It was the Depression,” she’d shrug.

Our mother inherited her humor from her father Morris, who despite the fact that he was a house painter, was somehow able to leverage enough money in the 1920s to own a small apartment building. When the Depression hit, however, things quickly went south and my mother would tell the story of one deadbeat tenant leaving the building for another across the street.

“I gotta go,” the man pleaded. “The rent is lower over there.”

“How could it be any lower?” my grandfather said. “You’re not paying me anything.”

Morris had the humor gene. So did our mom. And so today, on what is most certainly not her 93^rd birthday but rather a day, like so many others, in which I choose to think of her and laugh, I am pretty certain she is laughing as well.

Well, maybe.

“How could I be laughing?” says the voice in my head. “I’m dead.”