My first dog was a boxer, Rocky, I don't remember him much, but he was there for my birth. He was my dad's dog, mom wasn't a dog person. She had grown up with dogs as tools for hunting and tracking, not house pets, so having her new husband's dog in the house wasn't her favorite thing. My sister had just been born, I was two, and she was busy, in an instant I was gone. We lived in a small ranching and farming town in southern California with nothing but fields and avocado groves behind the house. Mom was frantic, she searched everywhere for me, the house, the yard, I had just disappeared. After a half hour or so she spotted some movement in the tall grass almost out of sight. Sure enough, there I was with the loyal and faithful Rocky right by my side. That dog could do no wrong from that day forward.
