Welcome to Laredo Collies

Who are far wiser in their way and far better in every way, than I; and yet who have not the wisdom to know it

Who do not merely think I am perfect, but who are calmly and permanently convinced of my perfection; and this in spite of fifty disillusions a day

Who are frantically happy at my coming and bitterly woebegone in my absence

Who never bore me and never are bored by me

Who never talk about themselves and who always listen with rapturous interest to anything I may say

Who, having no conventional standards, have no respectability; and who, having no conventional consciences, have no sins

Who teach me finer lessons in loyalty, in patience, in true courtesy, in unselfishness, in divine forgiveness, in pluck and in abiding good spirits than do all the books I have ever read and all the other models I have studied

Who have not deigned to waste time and eyesight in reading a word of mine and who will not bother to read this verbose tribute to themselves

In short, to the most gloriously satisfactory chums who ever appealed to human vanity and to human desire for companionship

— Albert Payson Terhune, "To My Ten Best Friends" from the forward to Bruce, 1920