I found a dog!
Or, to be probably more accurate, a dog found me. When I was about 14 I had a paper round in my village - most days it was drudgery beyond description, except for the Monday morning when I found myself being followed up the High Street by a Fred Bassett lookalike. He didn't appear to understand "Go on, piss off home", so a few Daily Mails and Telegraphs further down the street I decided I ought to do the responsible thing and take him off the street before he got hit by a car. I fashioned a lead out of a soggy length of that fake orange "rope" lying on the path near the Co-Op, and he happily accompanied me for the rest of my round.

The plan was simply to hand him over to the newsagent when finished (this seemed quite logical to me, him being A Grown-Up), but he clearly wasn't a dog person, yelling at me and pointing at the No Dogs Allowed sign in the window of the front door. My father was far more level-headed when I got home, however, and determined that we would look after the young runaway while trying to trace his owners. To discourage my young sister from becoming too attached, he took to calling our new lodger "Hound" in what he presumed was the country vernacular (think "Pig" in Babe), oblivious to the fact that she just thought it was a nice name for a doggy, and took great delight in fetching him water, feeding him biscuits and protesting that she couldn't stop him jumping up onto the lounge furniture with her. For my own part I was more interested in teaching him "tricks", and my mother ended up quite smitten as well, making him his own bed out of a tatty wicker basket and some old quilts.

Of course my father, who was working as hard as he could to repatriate the dog, sellotaping notices to telegraph poles and knocking on most of the doors in the village, took a dim view of his family bending over backwards to look after our new house guest, and sardonically titled the rest of us "Staff of Hound".
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Thu 6 Nov 2008, 14:20, 3 replies)

What?
Too early?
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Thu 6 Nov 2008, 14:21, closed)

I enjoyed this
But out of principle you're getting no clicks
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Thu 6 Nov 2008, 14:23, closed)

I was just about to give you a click
Because we found our dog, and named her dog while we thought of a name for her, but nothing worked as well as dog. I was going to give you a click in support of the naming coincidences, but instead I will give you one for completely tricking me. I didn't see it coming at all!
(The Kwyjibo A big, dumb, balding North American ape., Thu 6 Nov 2008, 14:28, closed)