One Golden Dog, Two Kevin Walshes

I talked to the other Kevin Walsh.  Who's he?  He's the guy who found my Golden Retriever, Susie, on the campus of Purdue University.  I wrote about this in Follow the Dog Home on pages 147 & 148.  That's him below.

Kevin Walsh, Purdue Graduate, Dog Finder

Actually the better way to describe it is, Susie found him--on a campus of 40,000 students in West Lafayette, Indiana.  My adventurous dog slipped out of my fraternity house, as she often did, and somehow managed to find her way into a different frat.  Low and behold Susie walked into Kevin Walsh's room on the second floor of the Sigma Epsilon Phi house.  Nobody knows how she found her way there.  Satisfied with her discovery, she plunked down on his floor and took a nap.

Susie and Walsh Family, 1988

Many of our readers have told us Susie finding the other Kevin Walsh is their favorite story.  They also wondered whether I'd been in touch with my namesake, with news about the book.  Twenty three years after the 1989 discovery, we reconnected.

The other Kevin Walsh lives in suburban Chicago, and it turns out we have more in common than our name.  We're both married with children, and all of our kids are girls.  I have a Samantha (coauthor of Follow the Dog Home), he has a Samantha.  There's probably more that we'll discover later.

I'm sending Kevin a book.  He doesn't have a dog now, but he did growing up.  He tells me his wife and kids are really putting the pressure on him to get a puppy.   Something tells me after his family reads Follow the Dog Home, they'll get one.  And if they do, we'll have another good Kevin Walsh dog story to tell.