Voted Most Popular at the Boise Farmer's Market

I was making my way through a crowd of people, shoppers who'd come to the Saturday Farmer's Market in downtown Boise. I was trying to find the Rediscovered Bookshop on Eighth Street. When I saw the store's sign I crossed the street, but then stopped in midflight. I'd spotted two magnificent St. Bernards lumbering down the sidewalk on leashes.

I changed directions and followed the dogs. The larger of the two seemed to me the longest dog I'd ever seen. Both he and the other dog had gleaming coats, and petting them became my new mission.

I wasn't the only person who had this as a goal. The people with the dogs could move forward only a foot at a time; everyone stopped them, wanting to touch the beautiful animals.

“If we're in a hurry, we don't take the dogs,” Patti Stevenson told me. Max and Ralphie, the dogs, are therapy animals that Patti and her husband, Jim, take to the Veteran's Home. Max, the larger, is four years old, and Ralphie is two.

It seems the dogs dispense good feeling wherever they go. The dogs have a two-year-old fan who looks forward to Saturdays and the market so she can love on the dogs. Patti said a tiny Yorkie who could fit in the palm of her hand also loves Max, and likes to crawl up on his back. While we stood visiting, a woman stopped to say hi who also has therapy dogs, Bassets. She said her own dogs love the big animals and get happy whenever they see Max and Ralphie.

My camera sat in the car about 10 blocks away, but Patti nicely offered to send me pictures, which had arrived by the time I got home.