Patches was the border collie brought to us by our older brother when he was studying electrical engineering at Montana State University in Bozeman.

We didn’t know beans about the care of a dog except to feed him table scraps, pet him alot and talk to him alot.  He was so beautiful, but it wasn’t too long before this marvelous dog bred for herding was almost too fat to run.

We enjoyed him so much, fat or not.  He was a good dog.

He appears in many pictures of my brother and I taken during our younger years. Farm dogs in those years were exclusively outside dogs.  One of the great disobediences of our preteen years took place on a summer day when, for five minutes, we brought Patches into the kitchen through the south door.  Then we hurried and got him back outside before the folks came back home.

Dad would sit on the back porch and talk to him sometimes, scratching Patches’ ears and looking into his eyes–then say with a chuckle, “Who says dogs can’t talk?”

I have a small black and white photo of my brother laying on a canvas army cot in the shade of the house during the summer giving Patches,  stretched out beside him, quality time with his human.  Somewhere in all my stuff is also a photo of our Dad in his bib overalls talking with Patches.