The typical dog is loyal and loving. It lives for twelve to eighteen years and it doesn’t deliberately run away. When you adopt an adult dog, you expect it’ll be grateful and eventually love you. You’ll keep it until it gets old and dies. This wasn’t the case with one dog who, over time, was given many names, because he always ran away. How do we know that Billy Boy was the same dog as Mr. Dog? Billy Boy had a leather collar with a brass buckle and a brass star. Mr. Dog appeared many miles away but wearing the same collar. The original owners tried to get him back, but the dog snarled and backed away. So the dog stayed Mr. Dog for a while. But he would never be owned for long. This wasn’t the first time he ran away. The thing is, he ran away over and over and whenever he reappeared he seemed a little younger than he had seemed when he left. Max, Charlie, Buddy, Pepper, Sinbad, Bandit, Chewy, Chewy, Max, Bumble. Sometimes the dog got the same name by accident, and sometimes he arrived with a name tag. This was before dogs were micro-chipped. In the thirties, dogs and human beings could disappear and start again somewhere else with a different name, a different age, even a different occupation and a different past.
Tales