Excerpt from one of the episodes of my Favourite Emmy-winning series : THE WONDER YEARS. The last paragraph is awesome.
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"When he was little...he was...cute. Everyone wanted to cuddle him. He was the perfect puppy. Then something happened. Buster...grew up. Suddenly he wasn't so cute. And just as suddenly....the family dog...had become...my dog."

Buster came to the Arnold house by way of Kevin's paternal grandfather. As Buster grew older the Arnold family didn't pay much attention to him until Buster's incessant barking disrupted the family's sleep pattern. And so, the family decided to get Buster "fixed." The night before Buster was to go to Dr. Ferlinger (Cristine Rose) the veterinarian, he ran away from Kevin while on a walk. Suddenly, the family's latent love for the dog resurfaced and they frantically tried to find him. When Buster found them, the family was happy and the next morning, they all took Buster to the vet.

Again the elderly Kevin in his voice-over concluded:

"And in a way, I guess you could say Buster's loss...was also his gain. He'd been this little stranger, who turned out to be part of our family. A venerable member of the alliance. One for all, and all for one. And over the years, through good times and bad...through seasons of hope and change, he stood by us all. A silent partner. The first one to greet me at the door...when I came home from my senior prom. The one who stared out our front window, on the day I left for college. And my mom said he stayed there for hours."