In the many years before I became a proper married woman, I shared houses, apartments, flats, with a wide selection of other people, a few women, but mostly platonic male friends. One of those male friends bought a house on the shore here, and I shared space with him and the occasional other tenant for several years (met my husband in that house, in fact).

My friend had the same attitude as Janie recounts; you'd think it was his own nuts in danger if you mentioned the word 'neuter' wrt any of his dogs. So he got this one dog, a smallish GS who'd been abused a little as a pup, when it was six months old. Then he got a job that kept him out of province for weeks at a time, leaving me, with no experience at all at the time, to train up this poor dog.

House training was difficult and took forever - he was still having 'accidents' years later, and while I was likely partly to blame, when I was responsible for training our own dog, she got the message in a few days, and I can't think what I did different. She was a lot younger, though.

Well, when Mac (name changed to protect the guilty) hit adolescence, he discovered bitches. Bitches in heat. Like the one across the road, whose owners were going for some purebred puppies which Mac wasn't gonna help with. He promptly invented the GSD Art of Escape.

My friend, when he'd make it home for a day or two, would build kennels. And extensions on kennels. And roofs, doors, extra boards, deep buried chain link, and so on. Made Mac no-never-mind. I would put him in his kennel when I left for work; when I came home, he'd be gone. Once I left him in the small old barn, figured he had plenty of room, not much to destroy, and couldn't get out. Came home to find he'd climbed up a ladder into the loft, broke the glass out of a 14 X 14 in. window twelve feet off the ground and jumped out. Not a mark on him.

Winter came, and by luck I got to work from home for a few months, so it was easier to keep Mac outta trouble, but he was devious in the extreme. He'd wait until I was coming in the door with my arms full of firewood and make a break for it, or a neighbour would walk in and he'd bowl them over on his way through. The attraction then was a black lab 10km. away. He could make it through the woods and across the ice in twenty minutes flat. Fortunately, the Lab's owner was a friend and felt guilty about not having his own dog spayed. Got so I'd dial him up as soon as Mac got out, say "He's on his way...", and shortly after the lab owner would drive him home.

RIP, Mac. You were a pain in the neck, but it wasn't your fault, and in spite of your down side, you were a good companion.