Most unnecessary souvenir? Oh, Jake, not really!

In my most recent email newsletter, I referred briefly to Jake as the most unnecessary souvenir of 2012, and claimed he was a gift from the city of New York. But this is only partially true. Jake is a strange little 62-pound dog, part basset hound, part mastiff, who was tied to the front of my editor's Harlem apartment building after Hurricane Sandy. I first learned of him in my editor's frantic, middle-of-the-night Facebook posts, and, as a favor, posted his ridiculous mug online, hoping som...