When I was 10 years old, I finally talked my parents into letting me have a dog. My dad held out for a long time: “Honey, you don’t want a dog. It’ll dig up the yard, chew up the garden hose and bite the mailman.” Eventually he consented and I chose Baron the Wonder Dog from a pen behind a pet shop.

Baron was my first dog. Here is is when he was young (circa 1969).
Baron was my inseparable companion. When I started dating, he decided that his lifelong history of sea and carsickness was no longer serving his higher purpose; he never threw up in a car or boat ever again.
When I went college, he and I set out for the West in my VW bus. We spent 9 cold months in Missoula, MT. In the spring we fled the cold and landed in Seattle, where we stayed in a home of some shirt-tail friends. At 5:30 a.m. the next morning, I let him out of the house for a potty break. He vanished. The year was 1979 and the only way I knew to try to find him was to check with the regional Humane Society shelters and veterinary clinics and to create posters to put up around the neighborhood.
I looked for him every day for over a month, but I never saw him again.
I adopted Buck, a 6 month-old Shepherd – Lab from the Humane Society at the end of my search for Baron. Buck had been surrendered by a man who was 6 foot tall, slender build, balding with gray hair and who typically wore a gray business suit. How do I know? Because Buck would drag me to meet anyone who fit this description.
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