Our 10-year-old daughter, Lily, is volunteering at the Saving Grace Pet Adoption Center. Which is good and bad. Good because it’s giving her an important lesson in volunteerism, bad because she comes home each week wanting to adopt another dog. Clearly she doesn’t remember our last foray into dog ownership: Puddy, the border collie/beagle mix. We adopted Puddy about six years ago. We named him after David Puddy, the Seinfeld character who played the witless boyfriend of Elaine – a man who was equal parts lovable and stupid. What could go wrong, right? Within days we realized just how ill-equipped …


