This oeuvre is about yet another stray dog we “acquired” one day. It seemed most of the stray dogs just “showed up” out of seemingly nowhere. Most of the time, we would see an extra dog when we fed the dogs. We usually fed the dogs in old cake pans and got 50 pound bags of “Sergeant’s Dog Food” at Shinrock Elevator. We always mixed in table scraps and meat juices so the dogs always had good meals especially evening supper. One night while it was my turn to feed the dogs, I noticed another new stray that came for supper and never left! He was a black shorthaired “Heinz 57” (or maybe “58”) and before long he had gained a lot of weight from all the “good eatin’,” and soon was almost as wide as he was tall. He usually followed Uncle Ned around and he named him “Pete.” However, most of the time he called him “Peedro Mandoza.”  I have no idea why, only that I do the same thing with both animal and human nicknames. Starting in High School until the present time (and well beyond I’m sure), I have given practically all our pets and people I work with nicknames. It’s either that I have the “gift” or it’s yet ANOTHER one of my obsessive quarks, no doubt it’s the former vice the latter. Some of the nicknames I’ve given over the years include” “Elmo”, “Chuckles”, “Queeg”, “The Hatchet Lady”, “Little Bimeo”, “The Ag”, etc., etc. (Another story subject for later). “Pete” had a white “T” on his chest and we always figured it was the initial for “Tillinghast,” and thus he was destined to live with us.  One of the funniest  “Pete” anecdotes we still laugh at happened to Uncle Ned. We had on old Hudson car as one of our vehicles and “Pete” would often jump through the window, if it was rolled down, and sleep on the back seat.  One winter night Uncle Ned took the Hudson to go bowling. He was traveling down the road in the black of night on the way to the Huron bowling alley, when all of a sudden he felt something plop on top of his shoulder! He said he had one of the biggest “startles” of his life! He immediately thought that someone was hiding in the back of the car and was going to rob and/or kill him or something! He was VERY relieved when he discovered it was only “Pete” who had awoken from his sleep and probably was just giving Uncle Ned a “friendly greeting”! I can imagine Uncle Ned in a momentary anthropomorphic gesture yelling something like, “%#@%&*# “Pete!” Don’t you EVER do that again!!!” I wonder if after that, if he always checked the back seat in ALL the vehicles before he ever drove at night again! It’s really a wonder that one or BOTH of them didn’t have an instant heart attack! Another time when we had one of our “Barn/House Painting Parties”, Art Moon, after SEVERAL rounds of Seagram’s 7, took his paintbrush and painted a big white stripe along “Pete’s” black-haired back. Since our barn was being repainted with Heavy Duty Enamel Barn Paint, the long wide white stripe was there for what seemed like many months before it finally faded completely away. He looked like a character that “Pepi’ Le Pew” would mistakingly amorously pursue!  “Ah, Cheri…”  In later years, “Pete” started to get old and his muzzle started to sprout white hair. He also had a bad heart, we assumed, and started to cough that sounded like he had croup. Since he was very much overweight, his heart was probably working overtime, especially when he would trot and/or run to keep up with us. One day we found him dead. We figured he died peacefully in his sleep. This was significant since he was one of the FEW dogs and cats, etc., that died a natural death instead of being killed in the road! Good Ole “Peedro Mandoza”!