THE HUDSON-CHATHAM MASCOTS

If there is one thing you can say about our our family it is that is is never complete until you count our dogs. My wife and I have both written about our dogs for as long as we have known each other. We love our animals. The current mascots of the Hudson-Chatham Winery are our pair of Dalmatians Cinder (the smaller one up front) and Chief (the one in the back). Whether it's sleeping under the big country kitchen table, or roaming the farm, sniffing up groundhogs and other wildlife, our logs love farm life.

In 10 SECRETS MY DOG TAUGHT ME I wrote about my old friend Exley, a German Shorthaired Pointer, "It had been Exley's job to raise me. All that time we had been having fun, going for walks, getting into trouble, being companions and friends in some great adventure. And I had spent so much time teaching him to sit, stay, lie down, roll over. But all along, he had been teaching me. It is the child that makes the man, and in this case it was a dog. All along it had been the dog doing the teaching, not me. How do you like that? And I love him for it to this day and will for the rest of my life."

I would say I have learned a great deal from every dog we've ever had. And we have loved them all.