I've had dogs since as long as I can remember, going all the way back to when I was five years old (a dachshund named Brownie. Hey, I was five. How much originality did you expect?)
As I got older the dogs got bigger. During my teen years there was a border collie named Gulliver. (We were a military family, and relocated quite often. Hence Gulliver, for Gulliver's Travels.)
After I left home and was on my own there was a succession of Labrador Retrievers. They have a lot in common with adolescent males. Enthusiastic, energetic, exuberant - not to mention pretty intelligent, but totally lacking in common sense. First was a black lab named Chump, who became impregnated by a German Shepard who possessed the ability to leap a six-foot high cedar privacy fence when the bitch next door was in heat. (The shepherd was named Sergeant, which I felt was appropriate, since he did to my dog what a succession of Army sergeants did to me - figuratively, not literally).
Chump begat Darlin', a yellow lab, who was named in honor of all the blonds I used to date, but whose names I could never remember, so I just called them by the generic term Darlin'.
Darlin' begat Josie, who was the sweetest, calmest, and best behaved Lab I ever knew. To compensate, she was also the dumbest. Josie had perpetual knots on her forehead from trying to chase rabbits and squirrels under our back porch deck. She never learned that a rabbit or squirrel, even running at full speed, could fit underneath the deck's baseboard, but a full-grown Lab could not. Do I really need to add that Josie was a blond?
We currently have a couple of mutts. I wanted another Lab, but was overruled by the wife and kids the day we went to the local animal shelter and saw these two. They're sisters, and also rescue dogs who were taken from an abusive environment and cared for until we adopted them. It's been interesting ... they're fine with women and children, but at first were very leery of men - especially men wearing baseball caps. Obviously they were abused by some asshole in a cap. They've come to tolerate me, but still are unfriendly towards strange men. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since we now have a couple of furry four-legged sentries.
We also have one other dog. This one possess special qualities that have resulted in a number of people asking if they could buy him from us.In fact, there was such demand for him that I was forced to put the following notice in the local paper.
(H/T to Bots for the picture.)
