It’s time to explain the origin of the name Adventure Buddies of Pick-Up Dogs fame.

Five years ago, my then girlfriend-now wife Kirsten and I had left Marcos and Lupe, my two rescue pups, and headed to Mexico. It was tough to leave the dogs behind but we did, cringing as we packed the suitcases. Kirsten was teaching at the UDLA in Puebla and I was coming south of the border to celebrate the end of the quarter.

We went down on a bus from Puebla to Oaxaca and the Adventure Buddies name happened somewhere in the middle of a high desert mountainous area in Oaxaca state. Contrary to the popular belief of people who have never been on them, buses in Mexico are absolutely luxurious and nicer than any public transportation (or airline for that matter)  that I’ve ever been on in the States.

While the desert scenes of burros and cactus passed by our window, we were watching movies on the bus’s plush screens and on came Air Buddies, sixth installment of the Air Bud comedy film series starring golden retriever Buddy’s puppies. Not our usual choice of highbrow films, but missing our buddies back home the Air Buddies instantly captured our attention. Although the original in English was Don Knotts’ last film (as voiceover narrator), we weren’t able to hear Knotts as narrator but rather the dubbed Spanish, which became quite hilarious. For example, rather than translate Air Buddies into roughly amigos del aire, Don Knotts’ Mexican counterpart uttered Air Buddies, but in a decidedly Spanish pronunciation. Something like “Er Boooodies.”

Thinking about Marcos’ propensity to follow us any and everywhere and Lu’s tight trailing right under our toes, there could be no better descriptor for our four-legged friends than Buddies. According to Dictionary.com, a buddy is a comrade or chum. Its verb form is “to be a companion.” Just about perfect for a dog and especially like our tight buddies so far away back north.

So that explains the latter part of Adventure Buddies. But what about the Adventure? That’s where Lu comes in. If Mar is the buddy of the Adventure Buddies, and he is, though Lu is, too, really having pioneered the concept, being the first dog I ever got, then Lu is the Adventure, though Mar, for all his coming along on all of the wild trips through the Cascades, the Rockies, the Sierras, the Redwoods, and on every road trip through 28 big western states, is also adventurous, too. Which makes Lu and Mar, and even Kirsten and I, all Adventure Buddies.