“Happiness is a warm puppy.” —Charles Schulz Charles Schulz knew a thing or two about dogs. After all, he created “Peanuts,” one of the most enduring and popular comic strips, in which a beagle is depicted with the same intellectual depth as his human counterparts.

Over the last 38 years or so, we have shared our home and life with six dogs. From Eddie the timid golden retriever in Ohio in 1988 to Stella the black Lab mix, who joined the household from underneath a Fieldbrook trailer in 2013, these are the dogs of our lives. They have all been rescue dogs in the sense t...