As a kid, I was never a “dog person,” to say the least.

In fact, I was terrified of dogs.

It all began with “Strippy”—a menacing black-and-white spotted English pointer, who was always barking furiously at the top of his lungs in our neighbor’s yard.

There he was, all seventy pounds of him, nervously pacing back and forth on a long metal chain, or sitting ominously on top of his green-and-white doghouse, surveying his kingdom from above.

Strippy was the king of the mountain—and I was his prey, frightened by his incessant barking and growling. We might as well have been living next door to a lion, for to me it amounted to the same thing.

On hot summer days on Bondcroft Drive, a quiet street in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, my sister Joanne and I would race through the sprinkler or splash in a small wading pool. But we weren’t entirely carefree, always keeping a wary eye on this seemingly dangerous animal, just thirty feet away.

I would later understand that the source of Strippy’s frustration was being chained up all day. After all, pointers are full of energy and go-power, tireless as hard-driving hunting dogs. They love to gallop and roam.

So it was no wonder that Strippy was so high-strung, lacking freedom and exercise. His owners kept him restrained, they said, to prevent him from running away.

One day, when I was about four years old, I was playing in the hedges behind our house with my sister, then six. In a flash, out of nowhere, Strippy suddenly broke loose and tore out of his yard and into ours, racing over the hedges and straight toward us.

Strippy pushed