She wasn’t my dog, or so I liked to think. My son wanted her from a litter of puppies from my dog. He named her Mongo after the character in the Mel Brooks movie ‘Blazzing Saddles’. Why, who knows. But she lived in the house with all of us like a pack. Eventually, as children grow up, they move out and have lives of their own, but my son couldn’t take Mongo with him, so it was planned that he would get her once he could have pets. Well, life did not go as planned and he got married and eventually moved out of state with his wife and her dog. I had lost my dog, Mongo’s mother, to a disease and Mongo kind of became a surrogate. She was always skittish, but she warmed up to me. If I was sitting or laying down, she had to be in my lap. She eventually learned to play with me a game of our own version of tag. Like all dogs, she loved human food, especially bacon, roast beef and steak. But anything I was eating, she wanted also. I loved and was amazed at how she would run to the end of our deck and launch herself high into the air and look around for rabbits to chase while still airborn. She, being a mixed breed of snauzer and sheltie mix, would run the perimiter of the yard protecting us from the evils of squirrels and rabbits and the occasional falling leaf. Annoying at times, but was a character in her own right. Taken by a very aggressive cancerous tumor that infected her jaw and spread to her lungs on June 2 2021. Even on her last day, she loved to run. RIP Mongo, a lost friend. I am sorry I could not protect you from cancer. Chase the rabbits in heaven.