Lucy as a puppy.

A year or so ago, while out and about with my better half on a random Sunday drive, somewhere on Highway 101, just north of Gearhart, we saw a sign. The sign said, “Min Pin Puppies Here Today.” Before I could squeak out a horrified “What are you doing?” my spouse was steering his way in.

This would be a good time to say my husband has a thing for min pins. Min pin, in case you’re not aware, stands for miniature pinscher. You might know the breed. These are tiny dogs but they are ferocious. My husband also has an affinity for Chihuahuas, the meaner and more disagreeable the better. A few years ago he sweet-talked me into adopting a 10-year-old Chihuahua whose picture he saw in the newspaper. The dog, who we promptly named Rinaldo, is sweet and loving one moment and barking and snarling the next. Luckily he has hardly any teeth; otherwise he’d be a holy terror.

After easing down a long and somewhat bumpy driveway, we pulled up in front of a low-slung ranch house. A beautiful lady of a certain age sporting white-blond hair a la Debbie Harry and wearing turquoise cowboy boots and a bedazzled jean jacket stepped out.

“Hi, I’m Elaine,” she said. “You must be here to see the pups.”

Over the next hour, we learned Elaine was in her 80s. A longtime breeder of American Kennel Club quality miniature pinschers, she only breeds the red ones described by the AKC as ‘red stag.’ She showed us around the back of the house to a heated shed where she had two litters.

I sat on the floor and a herd of 9-week-old min pins ran towards me. Picking up a roly-poly frisky male, my husband said, “How about this one?”

“If I have to have another dog, it’s got to be a girl,” I said. In addition to the Chihuahua, we also have another male dog, an elderly Lhasa Apso called Basil. After a few minutes, I indicated I was ready to interact with litter number two. “They’re only 6 weeks old,” Elaine warned. “That’s very young.” I said I was an experienced dog owner and could handle it. She opened a crate and half-dozen squirmy puppies tumbled out. They were very rowdy and playing roughly with each other save for the tiniest one. She came right over and placed her front feet on my legs. I picked her up and held her close. We gazed into each other’s eyes.

This is the one, I told my husband.

Not too long after, a man I’d just met in Gearhart at the By The Way gift shop showed me the pup he’d just purchased from Elaine’s 9-week-old litter. He said he was naming the dog Mary after his favorite sister. Since our little Lucy came into our lives, I’ve only seen the “Min Pin Puppies Here Today” sign one more time. Someone mentioned she might have moved away. Sometimes the whole experience — the temporary sign on the highway, the shed behind the house, Elaine’s Debbie Harry hair, her rhinestone embellished jacket and turquoise cowboy boots, her dozen tiny pups — seems a dream. When people ask where we got our dog, I love saying it all happened because of a Sunday drive. It strikes me as a perfect north coast kind of yarn, how our lives were changed by a highway sign.