They might smell funny, terrorize the mailman, or harbor peculiar habits, but they are our (furry and four-footed) neighbors nonetheless.

Advocate readers were asked to send in photos of their pets. We received droves of darling doggie pics — pointy-eared Dobies, droopy-eyed hounds, mussed-up mutts and dogs wearing clothes (which never gets old). The following is but a sampling of the sundry submissions that drew from our editors the most emphatic, “aww”s.

Name/breed: Lucy/miniature schnauzer

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Age: 2

Skills/tricks: understands English

People’s names: Talya Boerner

Lucy the mini schnauzer was the runt of the litter, but she’s smart as a whip.

She has a basket full of toys, and when her owners tell her “go get your ducky,” she never brings the squeaky hamburger. This one knows the difference.

In one day, she trained her owners to let her out whenever she rings jingle bells hanging from the back doorknob.

“She figured that our real fast,” Boerner says.

But Lucy’s real talent is making friends.

She gets along swimmingly with Cosmo, the Munger Place pup who doesn’t like any other dogs.

And she’s a regular at the well-known Worth Street hangout that is neighbor Harry Gibson’s front porch.

“We can’t go for a walk without stopping at Harry’s porch because she wants to stop and see him and drink out of his water bowl,” Boerner says.

Lucy is bossy — she gets up in the middle of the night barking, almost daily, at a possum that hangs out on the porch. And she will stand and stare at her leash until someone takes her out.

But she’s all love. Lucy’s favorite place to sleep is all the way under the covers at the foot of the bed.

Name/breed: Tara/mutt

Age: 2

Skills/tricks: mentors kittens

People’s names: Robyn Flessner and Aaron Price

Robyn Flessner went into the pet store for catnip one day and came out with a dog. As a professional pet sitter and dog walker, she takes in as many homeless pets as she can handle, and she couldn’t resist Tara. And the dog got along fine with the couple’s two cats.

A few weeks later, Flessner and Price found a 7-day-old black-and-white cat whose mother had abandoned it. They kept the tiny kitten in a dark, warm room, and they made sure to keep Tara out.

“Every time we would go in there to bottle feed the kitten, she would sit at the door and just bark and bark,” Flessner says. “So finally, I said, ‘let’s just let her in and see what happens.’”

What happened is that Tara sat down next to the kitten, named Curry, and watched over her.

“It’s like she knew that this baby was just defenseless,” Flessner says. “I guess that’s how they developed a strong bond of trust because Curry has been around Tara since before she could even see.”

Once the kitten got big enough, dog and cat became playmates and cuddle buddies.

Flessner and Price have the pictures to prove it.

“They’re just the best of friends,” she says.

Name/breed: Ms. Kitzie Kat/feline

Age: 1.5

Skills/tricks: bird watching

People’s names: Terri Higgins

Terri Higgins and her family had just come home from a family reunion out of town. It was about 10 p.m., and they were tired.

“I heard this crying, and I though it was a bird at first,” she says. “I was like, I’m not going to deal with this. I was exhausted.”

But she got a flashlight and hunted around her backyard until she found it: a tiny, bawling kitten.

“I wasn’t sure I was ready for a cat,” Higgins says. “And it’s like she fell out of the sky.”

Higgins had been “catless” since six years before when her two cats, Missy and Mr. Kitty, who both were over 20 years old, had to be put down at the same time.

Now Kitzie has her own room — a guest room that is decorated with cat pictures and birdhouses. She sleeps on her own bed in that room every night.

During the day, she keeps Higgins, who is an artist, company. Her favorite place to lie, as a kitten, was on top of the easel. And Higgins thinks she’s a very artistic cat.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better cat,” Higgins says. “She’s just so sweet.”

Name/breed: Jenny/Catahoula cur

Age: 2

Skills/tricks: obedience

People’s names: Brian Hall

Brian Hall’s girlfriend found JaQueMo, the Shi Tzu, driving down the street one day. His hair was all matted, and he was hungry, but he hopped right into the car and found a new home.

A few weeks later, when Hall was walking “Mo-Mo” near Ferguson Road, a dog came running up to them.

“No one was looking for her,” Hall says. “I thought, ‘this is crazy. This is such a beautiful dog. I can’t believe no one wants her.’”

Turns out, she’s a Catahoula cur, also known as a Catahoula leopard dog because of its trademark spots.

He named her Jenny.

Hall owns a landscaping company, Paradise Landscapes, and now Jenny likes to go to work with him, digging up soil where Hall plants flowers.

Little 9-lb. JaQueMo, whose nickname is “the terrorist”, barks and bites at Jenny to get her to do what he wants. The Shih Tzu once got out during a house party and got two broken ribs picking a fight with dogs down the street. He’s a bruiser.

But Jenny is the good one.

She sits in Hall’s Little Forest Hills front yard, sometimes for hours, and she won’t leave the yard even to chase a squirrel.

“She gets to the edge of the yard, and I tell her ‘Not another step,’ and she won’t take that step,” he says. “Her purpose is to be part of the family. She’s such a good girl.”

Name/breed: Pearl and Harvey, LOL cats

Age: 4 and 1.5, respectively

Skills/tricks: Internet sensations

People’s names: Liesl and Jon McQuillan

Harvey the cat is always striking these funny poses. Liesl McQuillan got a shot of him with his elbow propped up on a box, looking out the window.

It’s a riot.

She uploaded it to icanhascheezburger.com, a site for the Internet time-waster known as LOL cats. The site used Harvey’s picture, and gave him the caption, “bored cat iz bored”. And the picture made it into the most recent “I Can Has Cheezburger?” book, which is based on the site.

But Harvey doesn’t let the celebrity go to his head. Liesl found him on the SMU campus, where she thinks a student probably abandoned him. He’s one of six cats in the McQuillans’ Little Forest Hills household.

Another is Harvey’s nemesis, Pearl. Although she hasn’t made it to the World Wide Web yet, Liesl describes her as “the most beautiful cat, clearly, in the whole world.”

All of the McQuillans’ cats are inside all the time, and Liesl says the key to keeping a tidy kitty household is changing the litter boxes every day.

“We don’t have kids,” Liesl says.

Name/breed: Pepe Houdini Lightning/Pomeranian

Age: 4 or 5

Skills/tricks: modeling

People’s names: Marcia and Brian Phillips and 1-year-old Clyde

Marcia Phillips grew up in Munger Place, so she’s seen many abandoned dogs.

“People, when they don’t want their pet anymore, they will just bring them to a nice neighborhood and leave them thinking that someone will take care of them,” she says. “I’ve lived in this neighborhood my whole life, and we never bought a dog. They just show up.”

That’s what they think happened to Pepe.

Marcia’s mom had a neighbor who found a Pomeranian and couldn’t find its owners. So the Phillipses took him in.

They thought he was still a puppy because he was so small, but the vet told them he was just malnourished.

“He’s all fluffy and beautiful now,” she says.

And he seems to know it. Unlike so many dogs, Pepe likes to take warm baths, and he likes to wear clothes.

He wears sweaters in winter and bandanas in summer. But most important are his pajamas.

“If he doesn’t get his jammies on, or if we forget, he will sit next to me and be like, ‘Hello?’” Marcia says.

He has PJs with little ducks, a pair with little teddy bears on them, a red-and-white pair with a faux trap door, and the obligatory Christmas jammies. In the morning, he knows it’s time to get dressed.

“Everybody expects to see him in outfits now,” Marcia says. “So the pressure’s on.”

If all this sounds a little crazy, that’s OK. The Phillipses are in on the joke.

Their son, Clyde, was born a year ago, and Pepe loves to be around the baby.

“It’s like he’s always been here,” she says. “And he was just missing before.”