I wanted to create this post for all the dog lovers out there and to my dog, Tanner.

As a child, we didn’t have a whole lot of money. I remember one time my mom had just gone grocery shopping and purchased a MEGA pack of hot dogs… not the ball park plump when you cook ‘em, but the MEGA pack. They were half as big and came 30 to a pack. I think they even cost the same as Ball Parks. Anyhow, that next day as my mother slaved to make wages to feed three kids and the ends meet, I decided to have a block party with all my neighborhood friends… Guess what we had… of course, MEGA hotdogs. Needless to say, I didn’t realize the math. 30 Hotdogs ÷ 3 kids = 10 dogs per kid for one pay period of 15 days exclude weekends when mom was home which 0.909090909091 hotdogs per day… EACH.

Was my mother mad at me for feeding the hungry? Well, she encouraged me not to do it again unless I asked.

Two weeks later and another shopping trip landed MEGA hotdogs in our fridge. DON”T FEED THE KIDS! DON’T FEED THE KIDS! OK, I get it. That next day, I didn’t feed any kids hotdogs. However, across the street there was this cute little puppy. Yap! YAP! YAPAPYAP! Poor thing looks hungry. I guess I don’t have to tell the rest of that story. And no I didn’t give the dog 30 hotdogs… all at once.

The little dog followed me home and stayed; living a life of luxury and ONE or 0.909 hotdogs per day for two weeks. Well everyone knows what Pavlov’s dog did when food was involved, and so did this little dog, she wouldn’t leave. I begged my mom to let us keep her, I had given her a name already, Lassie. Give me a break, I watched a lot of TV as a kid. BTW, she looked nothing like Lassie the movie star. She was a mutt.

I’m not sure what happened or when it happened, but on our next trip to the grocery store, into the cart went a bag of dog food. I had my first dog in 1977. Lassie and I did everything a boy and his dog should do. Walks, wrestling, adventures around the city block, play fetch, and snoozes together in the shade of summer afternoons. It’s funny, I never had to put her on a leash. She was always there. She was my dog until we moved to Washington in 1983. It was difficult to leave her behind but we were leaving California. We sold or gave everything away except for the personal things that would fit into our 1978 Datsun B210 Hatchback. So we gave Lassie to a nice family we knew at church. It was the last dog I would own as a kid.

In the fall of 1988 I moved to Portland to attend college. At an area wide church service, TLC, I saw a man who looked very familiar… It was Daniel, the man we gave Lassie to. He and his family moved to the Portland area and had brought Lassie with them. He told me he changed her name to Lady. “I just couldn’t call her Lassie.” Whatever. He also told me after we left she had twelve puppies. OOPS!

I set up a time to visit Dan and his family, but most of all, Lassie. Would she still remember me? What would she look like? I arrived at Dan’s home and as I entered, I heard the protective bark of a dog. What a good dog. As she approached me, I greeted her like anyone greeting a dog should and that was hold out my hand. She gave a sniff, and then another sniff. Her head tilted a bit as she looked at me. If I were a dog whisperer, I would have thought she said, I remember you, but your bigger than I last remember. It was boy and dog together again. I threw the ball, but she was not as quick or interested in fetching. That’s OK. All I really wanted was to know she had a good life. I know she did. She died about a year later. What a special gift she was.

Four years ago our family rescued a Chocolate Lab. He has a few issues but he’s a wonderful dog. His name is Tanner.

He sits, rolls over, fetches, eats, poops, digs holes and loves my kids. He is everything a family dog should be. I hope my kids are having as much fun with Tanner as I had with Lassie.

Peace.
johno~