He got his house. Not too big... four bedrooms with three and a half baths wasn't too big was it? Lexie though it was. But then one night, standing in the newly fenced in backyard, he said the magic words.

"We could get a dog." with his trademark smirk. Her face lit up as he quickly demanded that it not be one of those yappy things he could kick a feild goal with (the ones that like to pretend to be dogs but were really large rats in disguise)... maybe a lab or a golden retriever. Something nice and well behaved and pure bred. She asked to go to the local shelter before they searched for breeders.

Mark Sloan had never been a shelter dog kind of guy... but when she turned a leathal Grey Sad Face (Deric swore Merrdith did it too), Lexie could get him to agree to anything. And the rather huge chocolate brown and white pitbull face staring at him from the backseat of his car on the way home from the shelter, confirmed it.

"Let's change his name. He doesn't look like a Salvadore."

The damned thing slept in the bed with them most of the time... and it drooled all over his favorite pillow since it seemed to prefer his side of their bed. It also seemed to adore chewing his favorite pair of running sneakers. At least she'd picked a good name. He had to admit, even if it was a pain in his ass that drooled and barked at anything that went near Lexie (which wasn't such a bad thing since she liked to go for a morning run when she could... alone)... Hero was a danm good name for a dog.

Especialy, he thought, after Hero wouldn't let Karev into the house without massive amounts of barking and growling. Apparently their loyal dog didn't like it when drunk guests grabbed his "Mommy"'s (he swore Tores started calling them the dog's mommy and daddy just to piss him off) ass at a cookout. Mark slipped the dog a third of his very expensive steak when no one was looking.