This past week and a half, I’ve watched several dog videos with the same theme: Dog found abandoned, shy or distrustful of humans; Human interacts with dog, showing it love and patience; Dog responds by being everyone’s best friend ever!

Don’t you just love a happy ending?

Of course you do… and those happy endings are quite frequent, at least according to what I’ve witnessed.

Take the dog Filbrix. The American Oliohound I found abandoned about a block over on a late winter evening. I was out walking our Chihuahua when this short-haired dog came bounding up at us out of a dark corner of someone’s privacy fence. The small dog and I took the invader in, gave her some food (her ribs were showing), tried to find the owner and then took her in for “just one night.”

“Just one night” has become several years. Every week we replicate her first meal with us by feeding her one raw egg on Friday mornings, and every day I find something she does to make me say, “Dogs… Oy!”

This morning for instance, the dog Filbrix was seemingly happy about sleeping at my feet while the better half and I sat on the pair of recliners in our living/family room. I mentioned something about going to the hardware store. The dog Filbrix became alert, putting her nose in my face (while stepping on the family jewels). The other half got out of her chair and like a flash, the dog Filbrix goes and occupies where the other half was sitting.

It was, after all, the dog’s chair. The spouse was the interloper.

Dogs… Oy!

Okay. A little explanation is in order to understand why I call the dog Filbrix, the dog Filbrix. When I was three or four years old, I was gifted with a stuffed dog (with a squeaky nose and floppy ears) which I named Filbrix for no discernable reason. Perhaps it had to do with the construction going on in our corner of the north side of Pittsburgh. A reference to “Fill Bricks” may have caught the attention of an impressionable youngster like me, and the rest, as they say, is history. Later on, I found that there is a resort on the New Hampshire coast named “Philbrick’s of Hampton” (I think it was Hampton. Could be something else.). It’s doubtful that I knew of such a place at such a young age. Besides, looking at their rates, well, they were a little out of my price range.

There is more to the explanation. When my daughter was in the same age range, the first wife and I visited some friends who had a dog named Adrick. My daughter fell in love with the pooch and started to call Adrick “The Dog Add-er-ick.” Not just Add-er-ick. It was always “The dog Add-er-ick.” I refer to the dog Filbrix as homage to my daughter.

Anyhoo, I did my duty and rescued the dog Filbrix. With patience and love, she has become my constant companion. My wife thinks that the dog Filbrix adopted me instead of the other way around. Some love, some attention, and in return, a friend for life.

Be Seeing You!