Jordan Adams got her dog Harold 10 years ago as a stray (he's about 13 now). He's a Great Pyrenees mix she said and she found him in South Dakota on the Pineridge Indian Reservation where she was doing small construction work. She was 15 years old and with a church group. "He was one of the wild dogs, except he didn't look anything like the other dogs. They were all kind of medium and mud colored. They told me he had arrived about a year earlier and they didn't know where from. They called him 'Polar Bear' but I fell in love with him and had to take him home."

Her father was not happy about the new arrival, "but I convinced him that we could just keep him for a couple of weeks, to get his health up. And he complained about his name. So I asked, 'What would you name him?' and he said, 'Harold' and we've called him that ever since."

Adams moved out to Seattle in her Toyota with Harold in the passenger seat and she's been here for two years. She lives in an historic home, Doc Maynard's house on 64th Ave SW. Historical side note: It was once a 319 acre farm where David S. "Doc" Maynard lived in 1857 until it burned in 1858. This home was built some time later then was sold to Ivar Haglund's grandfather Hans Hansen in 1869...this according to Paul Dorpat. In any case it is one of the oldest buildings in Seattle.

Harold eats regular dog food and scraps of course but he really likes snap peas and watermelon.

Harold enjoys the water and Adams described one event in which he jumped into a lake from a boat, "and we couldn't get him back up into the boat so my dad had to jump in and try to push him up and my dad's pants fell down, so that was pretty funny."

She describes Harold as "a big lover who tends to wander around. He has a lot of friends he likes to visit and he loves cats." Adams has in the past lent him out to train people to get used to big dogs. He loves children and he likes to herd them and keep them out of the street."

Harold's girlfriend is a German Shepherd named Zooey, and his favorite toy Adams calls "Sad Panda." "I will toss it up in the air and he will kill it, then spit it out and wait for you to toss it up again. It's a very lazy way to play," she said chuckling.

Adams said Harold seems to express almost human emotions in one way. He sighs expressively. "When he's bored with you or other times he will just look at you and just sigh...deeply. It's weirdly human."

She sums Harold up as,"My spirit guide. We've been through a lot together and I don't think I could have come out here to the west coast without him."