Whiskers, a terrier mix, was my first rescue dog and my responsibility. As a kid, I got up at 6 to walk him, and on winter mornings when I got back, my mother, Nurse Vivian, would have a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats for me at the Formica table and a bowl of French toast for Whiskers on the floor.

Sullen teenager that I was, the one time I asked why, Nurse Vivian replied, “He’s more excited to see me.”

There’s an unspoken rule in journalism: Do not write pet columns. I have never met an editor who actually likes them. Nevertheless, Jon Carroll, a predecessor in this space, slipped in at least 35 stories about his beloved felines.

I’m not as bold as Jon was, but Krypto, Buddyboy and Bandit each got one column, and Queenie last shared a tale of tails in 2020. That makes one column every two years or so. And unlike with my sons Zane and Aidan, I don’t need to slip the dogs five bucks when I mention them. Yet still, whenever I submitted a dog column, my editor-at-the-time would write something kindly but firmly along the lines of, “Well, I’m sure it will be a long time before we hear from Bandit again.”

The hounds that have inhabited the Bedlam Blue Bungalow have mostly been rescue dogs, and have until now at least partially Pekingese. Pekingese are called smoosh-faced dogs because they have an almost flat face. Collective-noun aficionados would note that there has been a “pomp” of Pekingese living in the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior.

Crazy Mike says they’re not real dogs and he’s right. We’re not used to real dogs. We’re used to Pekingese. Although T.S. Eliot claims these pooches fought the Pollicles, the truth of the matter is that Pekes are representatives of the law of inertia. A Peke at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside force, such as hamburger.

All of our dogs have gone through a chewing phase, and at some point, each of them has been blamed for eating our sons’ homework, but truly they never did any more than nibble.

Which brings me to Moxie. Moxie is a Havanese.

Unlike all of our other dogs, Moxie has a snout. She weighs almost nine pounds, and half that weight must be devoted to teeth -- 44 of them.

Which brings us to my bathrobe. At one time it was royal blue, until an accidental rendezvous with a bottle of bleach. I had hoped I could pull off a Sean Connery as James Bond look in my terry cloth, but the truth is I look much more like Fred Mertz.

I’m my most vulnerable in this bathrobe. It means that Moxie has won. She has licked my ear enough to get me out of bed. Most mornings I stick a dog under each arm, walk out to the backyard, and hope that the call of nature persuades them to do their business before Donner, the dog next door, convinces them that barking at the raccoons is more fun.

Moxie gets going right away, but Queenie sniffs each blade of grass before shaking the dew off her lily. This gives Moxie time to attack, and what vexes her most in the morning is the sash on my robe. You’d think that my outweighing her by 170 pounds would give me an advantage, but no. When she sinks all 44 teeth into something, she means to keep it.

Took me a while to realize that her chewing extended to all my clothes. There were clues. More missing socks than usual. The 36-inch belt which mysteriously became 34 inches.

I leave my jeans on the edge of the bed at night. This is a habit born of 20 years of parenting my sons, when I was never been sure whether 3 a.m. might bring a fireman, a police officer or a girl Zane had met at a party.

Running late one morning, I jumped into my jeans, threw on my sneakers on and hustled to Dr. Do’s office, ready for my dermatology appointment. When I sat down in the waiting room, I realized I had a bigger problem than sun exposure. Moxie had spent the night chewing through the seat of my pants.

I went home, changed my clothes and gave Moxie a stern lecture. But all she did was wag her tail. Then she pooped denim for a week.

The moral of this story? When it comes to enthusiasm, don’t be like your teenager. Be like your dog. It might not get you new Ralph Lauren dungarees, but it very well could get yo