A yappy, nosy, neurotic little dog that kept rushing ahead and scaring everything.

What they have now is a quiet, neurotic dog that no longer can bark.

Stephen Baker, who created the "Let your fingers do the walking" ad campaign for the Yellow Pages and advised readers on how to live with a neurotic dog, died in Manhattan on Sept. 13.

"DO be patient with your neurotic dog," he writes in "How to Live with a Neurotic Dog" (Pocket Books, 1960).

It is in Japan, too, that neurotic dogs are prescribed overnight stays at a five-star hotel, at $100 a woof including a steak dinner and a volcanic sand bath.

A newspaper columnist and his wife learn some life lessons from their neurotic dog.

The outcome has been an ever-growing number of incredibly messed-up, neurotic dogs, and with them a rise each year in the incidence of dog bites and other aggressive, antisocial behaviors - all of which contribute, of course, to the huge number of abandoned dogs.