Stan is our "forgotten" Scottie. We had her a little more than two years before she died of pancreatitis. She died the day after Mary Ann's father died. It was devastating.      Don't get the idea that this is a dead dog site. It's not. The sad truth is that dogs are more ephemeral than we. The joy in that is that we can have many of them in our lives.

About two years after we had Ollie, we saw a wheaton-colored Scottie at the Western Reserve Kennel Club winter dog show and knew we wanted one.      Once again, Mary Ann went on a nationwide search for a Scottie. We found a breeder in Tennessee, midway between Memphis and Nashville. Through some contacts with a travel agent, we finagled a two-day trip for one of us to fly down to Tennessee, rent a car, and visit the breeder to pick a dog. Pete won the toss and made the trip.      The flight down was memorable, but nothing there after. I rented a car at the Nashville airport and headed southwest on I-40.      To an Ohio boy, the interstate was mountainous. Probably to a native, or someone from the Rockies, it was just a little hilly. What I remember about the terrain is that I would pass semis on the uphill slopes while they were going 38 miles per hour and they would pass me on the downhill sides as they were going 80.      It was the second time in my life that I passed through town of Bucksnort. More about that will be found in further entries in my biography.      The breeder's husband was the town's pharmacist and I saw his drugstore as I passed through town. I eventually found the breeder. She showed me the litter's stud, a male named Spanky. He was a sad specimen. Not that he was a poor dog. On the contrary. He was frisky and well-muscled. I could tell that because a new employee had misinterpreted a comment from the breeder and shaved him down, thus the sad look about him. He was wheaton colored and since he was missing his normal Scottie coat, he looked strange.      We then went to the puppy area and she called in her pups. Three or four wheaton-colored Scottie puppies came charging into a 3 ft x 3 ft enclosure made of plywood – there were several such enclosures in a row – and commenced to do puppy things: rolling around on each other; biting ears, noses, tails, and feet; wrestling; and playing dominance games.      All of my practical knowledge about selecting a puppy flew out of my head when confronted with so many wheaton puppies. I watched for a while and then picked one that took my fancy. I've selected goldfish with more discrimination.      The breeder pulled the one I picked and we fussed around with each other for a few minutes – me and the puppy. Really, get your mind out of the gutter.        I took the photo above as the breeder held the puppies. She was about five or six weeks old at that time, so we'd get her two or three weeks after that. By air cargo. More on that fiasco below.       After the short visit, I got back into the rental and drove back to Nashville. Having some time on my hands, I took a quick driving tour and saw such sights as Twitty City. The motel I'd been booked in was an odd place.       I never sleep well in a motel, but this one would have put Procrustes to shame. After watching southern PBS where they showed hunters shooting-down deer, I tried to get to sleep. Sometime after 2 a.m., after the bars closed, the fellas in the adjoining room came staggering in, deep in their cups. Moments later the smell of cigarettes and barbecued ribs came blowing through the adjoining door. Try sleeping with that blowing in your face, along with lots of eating sounds and laughter.       I tried putting a towel under the door, but it didn't help. It also didn't help keep out the sounds of retching and puking about 45 minutes later.       Is it any wonder that I love Tennessee?

When Stan was eight weeks old, the breeder sent her to us via air freight. Never do that. Mary Ann took time off to get Stan from the United Airways freight terminal at the airport. There was a snafu. Stan wasn't on the flight.      Mary Ann called the breeder to verify the flight. Yep, that was the correct flight. Mary Ann called United. Yep, the dog had been put on that flight. Oops. Wait a moment. The connecting flight hadn't connected and the two hours Stan was supposed to be in transit turned into six. Did United care? No, not much. To them an eight-week old puppy was about as important as an American Tourister stuffed with dirty underpants.      Mary Ann called the breeder and told her of the delay. The breeder was furious as well. She instructed us to buy some Pedialite since Stan would probably be dehydrated. Pedialite? Not having had kids we didn't know it was a liquids replacement chock full of electrolytes kids – and puppies – need after they've been dehydrated. A quick trip to the drugstore and we got the stuff.      When Stan finally arrived, we did everything wrong.      She was pretty bedraggled when Mary Ann got her home. We let her out in the yard and she sniffed around tiredly, peed a bit and then sat on the asphalt. Time to put my big brain in action.      I'll let Ollie out so she can see the new dog, says I.      Mary Ann wasn't so sure, but I was being The Expert.      I let Ollie out. She took one look at the strange dog in the backyard, gave an unhappy bark, charged Stan, and bowled her over. Not an auspicious start, but Stan later gave as good as she got.

Scotties aren't large dogs. They weigh in between 18 and 28 pounds, depending on sex and genetics. Stan wasn't a big dog. She's eating her first meal in her new home. Those are small puppy bowls.

Stan recovered almost immediately from her ordeal in the air. What surprise me, and later Mary Ann was that the breeder had clipped Stan at such an early age. When we got Ollie, she'd never been clipped.

We're big believers in providing puppies with a rich play environment. Notice the vinyl nubby ball, the hard-rubber chew, and the puppy Nylabone. All guaranteed to murder a puppy. They bite off big, honking, chunks of these things. If the stuff doesn't kill them, they vomit it up on the bed at 2:18 a.m.      We've since learned that the only safe toys are Adult-Strength Nylabones and plush toys that you take away from the dog as soon as you see they have popped a stitch.      Kongs are safe, but only in sizes large enough so they can't bite the tops off.

Another shot, moments after the one above. What is it about balls that so fascinates dogs?      These photos are less than perfect since they were taken without the use of a strobe. As the strobe charges it's capacitors, it makes a high, keening sound that distracts dogs to no end. They cease to act normally and want to know what's making that noise. Terrific if you want lots of over-exposed close-ups of their noses.      These pictures were all taken with a film camera since at that time, digital cameras were all the property of either the CIA or NASA, were as large as a dishwasher, and cost more than a million bucks.

This is Stan's revenge for being knocked over by Ollie when they first met. Let the Dominance Games begin!        This is also one of the first photos where I realized it's impossible to set an exposure so you get the details of a white dog and a black dog at the same time. This problem would plague me until we finally got two dogs of approximately the same luminance value.      This picture was take at my [Pete's] parents house, in the kitchen.

Another shot of the Dominance Games. Stan is up by five points.

And in a literal upset, Ollie wins the Dominance Games! Huzzah!      Ollie held her place in the pack order and Stan became the second banana.

Stan was a dog from the South. In her short life up to this point, she'd never encountered snow, or at least Cleveland Lake-Effect snow.      I'm not sure, but I think this must have been in March. It was Stan's first snowfall as far as we knew. Turned out she loved the stuff. She'd root around and hog-wallow in it until she started trembling from the cold. We had to force her in and then thaw out the snowballs that accumulated in her coat.

Stan was a frail dog, although her health declined so slowly that only in retrospect that we even came to notice it. Looking back, we saw that she'd lost most of her hard coat and only her thin, silky coat remained. She was a handsome dog, almost white.

Stan was a little larger than Ollie, but she knew Ollie was the boss. Or course, so did Ollie.

This is the last picture we have of Stan. That's Mary Ann's father, John, holding the girls. Be had a brace for the two dogs. It's a ring with two eight-inch leads on it that clipped to the dogs' collars. You then hooked a leash to the brace. John used to love walking the dogs on the brace.      John retired and then died two weeks later. We got word that John had died and took the dogs to my parents' house. As we were helping make arrangements for John, my mother called and said Stan had thrown-up twice.      As I'd said, she was a frail dog, so her throwing up wasn't something unusual. Mary Ann made arrangements to have me take Stan to the vet. As I was driving her to the vet's, she threw up in the backseat of the car and I got angry at her. I was still mad about the vomiting in the car when I dropped her off at the vet. That was the last time I saw her.      We got a call the next afternoon at Mary Ann's parents' house from the vet. Stan had died of pancreatitis the day after John died.      We'll always miss Stan, who lived with us so short a time, but it was only four months later that we got Woodie.