Patti Stevenson and Max off for a Ride

Therapists Max and Ralphie, with a Starbucks

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.

Max and baby Kathlyn

The Importance of Cookies to Travel

You can't expect to know a place without sampling its cookies.

Some of my friends have gone over to gluten-free, others avoid butter and dairy; others stay away from sugar. But I persist in eating cookies. Eating a locally baked cookie can tell you more about a town than anything you'd learn from the Chamber of Commerce guidebook. Ice cream can do the same, if it's made locally, but generally it's shipped in from distant places.

I try to eat the cookies at a spot where I can enjoy a distinctly local view. The other night I stopped to watch a sunset from a beautiful, high ridge. Sitting on a boulder, I ate a cookie purchased from the town's Main Street bakery. A snickerdoodle, rich in cinnamon.

Dogs want treats, too, of course, and I carry healthful dog cookies for them. Ones that won't harm their teeth, are vitamin-enriched and have coat brighteners in them. The dogs go nuts over them. I don't hold to such a high health standard for myself. I'm after flavor.

A few summers ago, when the dogs and I were driving a long, empty stretch in Yukon Territory, Canada, I dreamed about a buying a cookie when we finally reached a gas station. The station we came to had one pump, rusted and ancient. Inside, I bought a large gingersnap.

I asked the woman how cold it got there in the winter, and she said minus 60. I asked her how the stock survived those temperatures and she looked puzzled. “The horses and cattle,” I said. “Oh! We don't have any of them. The wolves would eat them.”

Later, the dogs and I took a walk on a deserted road. I pulled out my cookie. It apparently had been baked the previous year; I bit into granite. A gingersnap with emphasis on snap. I persevered to chew it, but then, somewhere on a hillside, a wolf howled. My three dogs came tearing down the road, I dropped my cookie, and all of us sprinted for the car.

I've heard no wolves this summer, and the cookies have all been fresh. There was the warm chocolate chip cookie in Moab, eaten beside a river swollen with snowmelt, the peanut butter cookie eaten at a pullout while gazing at Mount Borah, the Swedish cookie from a German bakery in Jackson, WY . . . You get the picture.

It's Tough to Be Independent

Consider what the independent book store owner has to contend with. Large chains that can buy in volume, the Internet, which lets people shop for books from home, e-books, which can be downloaded, fewer people taking time to read, plus, a poor economy. No wonder many independents have closed their doors.

Phyllis Lamken, owner of Dark Horse Books in Driggs, Idaho, heard of a store helped financially by a philanthropist who wanted her local independent book store to stay afloat.

“How nice, ” I said.

“No,” Phyllis said. She herself would not want such help. She wants stores to remain open because the communities they serve recognize their value and support them.

Independents play an important role. They hold activities for children, host forums on local issues, cooperate with libraries to sponsor literary events, and bring in writers for discussions, poets for readings, and musicians to entertain. They serve as a community hub.

Phyllis believes the music industry made a mistake by not giving more support to music stores. Stores acted as havens where people could go and listen to music and talk with other music fans. Since music stores have closed, most music sales happen on the Internet.

Daiva Chesonis, the manager of the book store side of Between the Covers Bookstore and Espresso Bar in Telluride, Colorado, says stores like hers are probably safe from competition from large chain stores, because such chains usually locate new stores in communities with larger population.

She has a hopeful figure to cite, too. In the last year, despite a trend toward independents closing their doors, a few new independents have popped up and opened for business.

Ringo from Riverside

Ringo likes whatever activity his people engage in, but he likes fast best. Mountain biking, running, Frisbee, agility, find-it games, hiking. He likes the program Dancing with the Stars, especially Latin numbers, and shows which couple he prefers by running to the TV and jumping on it. So far, he has picked winners.

Ringo understands lots of words, and his person, George Bolte, said he and his wife must use Pig Latin or spell when they want to keep something from him.

He likes to sit quietly, too, but when his people make a move to go, Ringo is oh-so ready.

Ringo, Who Is Always Ready

Woof, Who Has Many Friends

Photo by Jayme Feary

SMILES

My writer friend Jayme Feary trains dogs and horses. His own dog, Woof, an Australian shepherd/Border collie cross, went with him on a solo Continental Divide horse/muleback ride.

Woof has an easy-going disposition, plus good manners that Jayme taught her. Lately, this already lovable dog has found a way to be even more appealing. She smiles.

Woof used to smile only when Jayme got after her. “Woof!” he'd say, and she'd duck her head and lift the corners of her mouth, revealing white, even teeth. The smile came off as cute. People who saw her do it laughed and commented, and that wasn't lost on Woof. Recently, the dog has taken to smiling when she isn't feeling guilty, she smiles to get attention. She didn't have to read the books; she figured it out for herself. A good way to win friends is to smile more.

This came in handy recently. Jayme is joining the University of Montana's MFA in writing program. He found a small apartment he liked in Missoula, but the landlord said, “No dogs.” Clever Woof sidled up to the man, looked up, and offered her best smile. Jayme and Woof are moving in.

But there is more to Woof than charming smiles. She can be fierce when she thinks the situation calls for it. One recent day, I sat in a restaurant parking lot in Jayme's car. In the back seat, dozing and content, lay Woof and an Australian shepherd dog guest named Faith. Jayme and I had earlier visited in the restaurant with a man in leather and boots who was waiting for his motorcycle to be repaired. When Jayme said he had to check his dogs the man said, “Sure, go on. There are two things I really know. Dogs and Harleys.”

We didn't see the man approach the car and lean against its side. We became aware of him when Woof and Faith tried to go through the car window to eat him alive. The pair of them flung themselves at the glass, snarling and barking. It startled the man so badly he jumped out of his boots.

Jayme told the dogs to cool it, but after the man left it was Jayme who growled. “Knows dogs.” He shook his head. “Didn't he realize? The nicest dogs in the world will protect their car, and the people in it.” Jayme's lips lifted in a smile-an uncharitable one. “I think that guy will have to change his pants.”

Tragedy, Triumph, and Rotten Behavior

Twenty years ago, the woman lost her husband and her dog. The two of them drowned.

The woman's friends, worried about her despair and fragile hold on life, raised money to buy her a puppy.

I sat next to the woman at a Saturday night barbecue. She lives in Wyoming, dresses Western, raises bison, exudes energy, and remembers with gratitude the pup who saved her life.

“I was so sad I didn't want to live. But then, I had a puppy to take care of.”

I found it inspiring that the woman's friends found a way to help her hang on, and that the woman had opened her heart to love again after grievous disappointment. But the story didn't stay altogether lovely. When I asked the woman how long she'd had the dog, and if it had remained her great friend for its whole life, she told me a disgruntled neighbor had poisoned it. The woman suspected that's how her dog died, but then other neighbors confirmed the man was bragging about it.

Hard to square both sides of human nature in this story. The heroism of a young woman who finds strength to keep going in part because of the kindness of friends, against the nastiness of a man who, instead of airing grievances real or imagined to the dog's owner, gave the dog a horrid death.

Mick. A Good Traveler