The exact date I wrote the first lines of what would eventually become The Smallest Rottweiler is lost to time, but it can be reasonably placed in late February or early March of 1992. The book was born from a quiet but determined hope: to finish it in time for Mother’s Day that year. In 1992, Mother’s Day fell on Sunday, May 10th. What I could not have known at the time was that this project would consume the better part of the year. I would not type the final words on my new IBM PS2 personal computer until mid-December, ultimately presenting the finished, bound manuscript to my mother as her Christmas gift.
Over the decades, I carefully packed away documents I considered worth saving. Among them were the first fifty-five pages of the original draft — what I had designated as Part 1. The whereabouts of the draft copies of Parts 2 through 5 remain a mystery to this day. It was only recently, in early 2026, while searching for an entirely unrelated document, that I rediscovered that original Part 1 buried deep in a storage box. Holding those pages again after more than thirty years was a strangely emotional experience.
The manuscript was printed on a dot matrix printer — a piece of technology instantly recognizable to Baby Boomers and Generation X. The pages still bear the distinctive perforated tractor-feed edges along the top, bottom, and sides. Seeing that physical artifact transported me back to a different era of writing: the loud clatter of the printer, the smell of fresh ink, and the satisfaction of tearing off a new stack of pages.
Before I wrote a single word of the story, I began with a simple handwritten outline. That outline, which I have preserved, was created while I was still on patrol. The core idea — the true story of the smallest puppy in a Rottweiler litter growing up to become a pioneering police K9 — came to me during those long shifts. Many of the character names and several plot elements in that original outline differ from the final published version. What began as a straightforward telling evolved significantly over time.
The book’s original title was simply “Barney.” A secondary title I considered was A Rottweiler Story: Hopes and Dreams. It wasn’t until I was deep into revisions, roughly halfway through the rewriting process decades later, that I changed the title to The Smallest Rottweiler. The new title felt truer to the heart of the story — a celebration of potential, perseverance, and the extraordinary journey of an unassuming underdog.
To give readers a window into that early creative process, I have included scanned images of the original first two chapters. Looking at them today, I still cringe at certain passages and obvious errors. Yet I also recognize something important: the raw material was there. As any writer knows, the first and most vital step is simply getting the story down on paper. Only then can the real work of editing, refining, and polishing begin.
Since that original 1992 draft, I have taken considerable liberties with the story. Some sections were completely rewritten, new characters and story arcs were added, others were removed, and many names were changed. What started as a deeply personal gift for my mother has grown into a much richer and more layered narrative.
As an amateur author, I have never pretended to reach the level of craftsmanship found in the work of professional writers. Still, I poured years of effort into this project — studying developmental editing, line editing, proofreading, and incorporating feedback from multiple beta readers. My hope is that readers will feel the sincerity and heart that went onto every page, from those first perforated dot-matrix sheets in 1992 to the finished book released in 2026.
Original Outline. New names are placed in [****].
- Introduction – Andrew’s [Mitchell] house
- Burnice [Millicent] goes into labor
- Burnice has trouble due to her injury
- Burnice gives birth to six puppies
- Burnice has complications – Stella [Marlene] help out
- Burnice give birth to Barney [Gunther] – Alexander blames him for the complication and for threating the life of Burnice
- Andrew meets the pup’s for the first time
- Explanation of how Burnice and Andrew had met
- The other dogs are introduced
- Andrew rides to the top of the mountain
- Rex [MJ] meets the pups for the first time
- Burnice tells Rex about Alexander’s past and asks for help
- Rex dreams about the time he was young and how he became a K9
- Daily routine of the kennel, short stories about the other dogs
- Alexander gets mad when others talk about the pups
- Rex and Alexander meet at the base of the mountain when Andrew returns
- Alexander joins Burnice for the first time – still apprehensive about Barney and the ordeal
- Introduction into each pup’s personality
- Burnice takes the pup’s outside
- Alex [Max] and Capone [Smalls] rush off and end up meeting Bud and is punished by Burnice for not listening
- Barney is rejected by Alexander
- Alexander starts preaching how they should act
- The pups play outside in the court yard
- Rex meets Barney for the first time
- Encourages him to Tire Ride
- The male dogs engage in war stories
- Barney hits Alexander while tire riding
- Alexander gets so upset that Rex has to calm him down
- Rex and Alexander walk up the mountain to talk
- Alexander takes Rex to a secrete place at the top
- Alexnader talks about his late wife Kathy [Removed]
- The story of Kathy is explained
- Rex tells Alexander he is wrong to blame Barney
- Barney meets Bud [Jake] and discovers there are thousands of other animals on earth
- Bernice punishes him for running off
- Alex, Capone, Shadow, Bear and Toeby [Mozart] find a secrete tunnel out of the barn
- Rex talks with Barney while he is on restriction – tells him about trust
- Tells Barney about being a K9 and how he has to trust his partner and how sometimes thing go wrong
- Barney asks about being a K9 and Rex tells him stories
- Rex talks with Barney while he is on restriction – tells him about trust
- Alexander talks to the pups about what they are suppose to do and Barney makes him mad when he tells him that he wants to be a K9 police dog
- Alexander yells at Barney for making such a statement
- Burnice steps in and takes the pups into the stall for their nap and returns to yell at Alexander for his behavior
- Burnice tells Alexander about Ulysses [Removed] and the way he raised his pups and the way her father raised her
- Barney’s brothers and sisters make fun of him
- Barney sees Alex and Capone drawing in the dirt and investigate it. He knows they are planning something
- Barney overhears Stella telling Rex about the bigotry in the dog kingdom
- Barney overhears Alex, Capone and the others talk about leaving the next night, but doesn’t know what it means
- Burnice and Alexander talk and decide that perhaps they were both wrong in their discussion of how to raise the pups
- Andrew tells the grown-ups that in the afternoon four families were going to adopt four of their pups
- Minnie [Sally] finds our that one of the families want to adopt one of her pups’ and become very emotional. Burnice and Betsy [Jessica] console her
- Burnice and Alexander talk with their pups about what was going to happen
- Alex, Capone and the others make up their minds that hey are running away that night
- Clifford, Shadow, Bear and Fritz were adopted by the four families
- Rex tells Barney that he was going to have to place his trust in fate. He tells him about wanting to be a seeing-eye-dog when he was his age
- Tells Barney about Clipper [Neo]
- Barney doesn’t like the idea that he was to rely on fate to determine his future and decides he too was going to run away and make his way to the police K9 range and be would prove himself
- Alex and Capone manage to unlock the stall door and sneak out and wait for Toeby at the entrance to the tunnel.
- Barney also sneaks out
- Toeby can’t make it so Alex and Capone leave without him
- Barney follow them out of the tunnel shortly after they leave
- Alex and Capone take off running toward the mountain and Barney isn’t far behind them
