We now refer to him as the OG pit bull in the family, but back then, he was the grown puppy (?!) that I had gotten a year or so earlier from a friend of a lady with whom I worked doing voiceovers at Cable AdCom on the local real estate channel. That friend of the lady was recently divorced from her husband, and she couldn't take care of both Demon and her kids ... so I got Demon for (frat)brother (and more) DJ. Eventually, DJ embarked on some out-of-state travel, and so Demon came back to me -- on the condition, though, that it would be a permanent arrangement to provide the dog with some stability.
Demon James will most definitely be showing up again as these tales get told two decades after they happened (at least up until 2028, since he passed in 2008) ... but in the kitchen of this house, the memories are about the ham bone Eric tried to use to make friends with him (he gladly accepted the ham bone -- and then chased Eric out of the house) ... and the time he ran the length of the first floor and burst through the front screen door (scaring a passerby who was being too loud -- a passerby who said afterwards that he was so frightened that he jumped from one side of the two lane street to the other and didn't remember touching the ground) ... and all the walks he took around the neighborhood ... and especially the very first night we bonded when I dog-sat him and he basically ate an entire leg of my denim jeans one strip at a time that he ripped off of me as we lay there.
And *that's* how we became best buddies.
