What started out as a good idea to get a dog for our son soon morphed into an arrangement whereby two big messy pups took over the household. Not content to be mere add-ons, Rambo and Buddy soon moved front and center of our existence, bringing joy and a degree of inconvenience overlaid by a rich layer of devotion and unwavering loyalty to the pack. Twelve years of fun and adventure unfold in these pages as we tried to remember that our four-legged companions were, after all, only dogs. We thought of them as family. Join us on backpacking trips and winter excursions in the mountains of Idaho where the pups remained at the center of the action. Rambo and Buddy went everywhere with us. Mostly we just played together. Their individual personality traits did not always blend smoothly with ours but we remained an inseparable pack of four. This is their story.