A Dog is a Young Man’s Best Friend
I was in the ninth grade when my family relocated to small town Kansas from St. Louis. I was pretty upset about it. We had moved from an area with big league sports and all kinds of activity to a rural area where apparently nothing ever happened. But my father had gotten a job with a company there, and it was a good chance to live in “a safe, friendly, small-town community”, so away we went. Naturally, being the new kid in high school when everyone already had well-established friends meant that I was shunned by the other kids. As a result, my parents got me a dog – a Malamute / Australian shepherd mix that somehow ended up with the name Joanne, or Jo for short. Since I felt my parents were just trying …