“Wowser” was my second purebred Golden Retriever. After the loss of Cowboy, I could not go long without another dog. The year was 2009 and my husband and I had just returned from a trip to China to bring home our 11 month old daughter, Eva Mei. I knew better than to manage a puppy and a baby at the same time. I called Kathy Yates, owner of Hunter, Cowboy’s sire, to see if she might know of anyone that wanted to place a mature dog. It was not long before she knew of a young woman that decided her one year old Golden needed more attention than she could manage while pursuing her equestrian activities. The woman agreed to leave her young male dog, at the time, named Major, with my family for a week. The situation was odd in that the woman never came back and would not return my calls to confirm we could keep the dog. She had said he was co- owned by someone else and I might have to let him go to the show ring. I never heard from her again and still do not know the Wowser’s pedigree. He was a beautiful and anatomically correct dog. My sons renamed him Wowser as at the time, we were reading the book, Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era, by Sterling North. This wonderful, moving memoir chronicles a young boy’s childhood in rural Wisconsin during WWI. Wowser was Sterling’s much beloved dog. We all loved Wowser and he was a cherished family dog. Wowser succumbed to Cutaneous T- Cell lymphoma in 2016.