Last Saturday, I briefly met one of the founders of a large internet company. There was six or seven of us, including his wife, plus a few kids who were with us, playing at an elementary school. He and his wife have a couple of dogs, and the dogs were already with us when he showed up. The dogs went nuts when he arrived--they had that "Where the heck have you been...but I am so happy to see you that I am going to run in circles and wag my entire body with sheer joy and bark like a lunatic" thing going on.

And this is not a new thought, but it really struck me again as I watched: Dogs just don't care if your net worth is $20 or $20 billion. If you love them and treat them well, they will love you back unconditionally. And for those who have never owned a dog: never underestimate the power of having someone who is *always* happy to see you, no matter what.

The wife of this fellow had used my cell phone to call him just before he showed up...so I now have his private cell phone number on my call log, but it would be an extraordinarily bad idea for me to use to use it or give it to anyone, so I won't. ("What could possibly go wrong with that plan?!") The best thing will be for me to just forget that I have it.

And, speaking of pets, I saw a compelling spoken editorial by Ben Stein on CBS Sunday Morning recently...he was talking about how all sorts of folks with varying degrees of culpability for the housing crisis are getting bailed out by the government...but one group who did absolutely nothing wrong, and is getting hit very hard, is pets. Turns out that across this land, there are lots of people who are leaving pets behind after foreclosures.

I think Stein is on to something. If we are going to bail out Bear Stearns, how about 1/10th of 1% (i.e., $29 million) of that for some new animal shelters? Of course, nothing is without controversy...when searching for a link to the Stein piece, I found some harsh criticism of it on-line, which I won't bother linking to.