Sometimes my mind can twist things around into the shape of a pretzel. Take the other day, for instance, when I was singing old Willie Nelson songs while vacuuming up dog hair throughout the house. “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” just naturally started me thinking of all the dogs I’ve loved.

Here’s to Dusty, my childhood cocker spaniel whose left eye had to be sewed shut after a losing spat with a neighborhood cat. Dusty was not popular on our street. He and a basset hound friend howled at night.

Here’s to Saturday, a chow I’d impulsively brought home from the pound on a summer Saturday – of course – and whom my mother gave away the minute I left for college. The postman quit delivering mail, she said, and the paperboy wouldn’t come near.

Here’s to all the dogs I’ve loved before.

Sippi wandered into the newspaper office where I first worked. Eventually, he took over my heart -and apartment, where he suffered anxiety attacks when left alone and was prone to scattering any foodstuff kept on lower kitchen shelves. Rice and spaghetti particularly; but once, he shredded an entire box of Kleenex, which he left in a pile on the bed.

Shaggy dog Jonas was another I retrieved from the dog pound, the shelter in Bangor, to be exact, back in 1968. Jonas endeared himself to me on the long ride home by standing on the back seat with his paws on my shoulders. Likewise, I threw my arms around his neck every single day we were together. Even after he got into the bait tub at the lobster co-op and reeked of ripe herring.

Here’s to Fred and Ned, brothers in need of a home where the mistress was a pushover. Here’s to Buff, whose habit of chasing pickup trucks led to his early demise. Here’s to Maggie and Jiggs, springer spaniel siblings whose freckled noses sniffed at everything from chipmunks to, unfortunately, porcupines. Maggie moved out of state, but Jiggs was a family fixture for 13 years. A compulsive retriever, he nearly drowned while fetching a buoy he never figured was attached to a lobster trap.

Here’s to Nicholas, a feisty little hairball who sadly – for him – developed a penchant for biting. Nicholas may, some suggest, have gone to doggie hell. Here’s to Peat, a chocolate Lab the color of a peat bog in Washington County. He was short-lived, but long remembered.

Then, there was Dough Boy, a yellow Lab-golden retriever mix named for a favorite dessert at the Blue Hill Fair – and just as sweet. His ashes are strewn over the woodland he loved to roam.

Here’s to our Little Drummer Boy, an energetic German short-hair whose head looks as though it had been dipped in hot fudge. He’s on the deck now, pointing two doves that are nonchalantly pecking at the ground.

Here’s to them all. Like Willie, I’ve loved every doggone one.