Here's a story that may help New York Times columnist Gail Collins get over her obsession with the incident of Mitt Romney and the dog on the car.
In 1996, two years after Romney had returned to Bain Capital after running unsuccessfully against Ted Kennedy for Senate, Robert Gay, a partner at Bain, came to him and confided that his 14-year-old daughter Melissa was missing. She had sneaked out of their Connecticut home three days before, gone to a rock concert in New York City and hadn't been heard from since.
Gay was embarrassed about confessing his dilemma and didn't expect anything more than a little commiseration. Instead, he was amazed at Romney's reaction. The co-founder of Bain immediately informed the other partners of the situation, then closed down the firm and mobilized a temporary move to New York City to search for the girl. As the New York Times reported it at the time:
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/05/08/meet-the-real-mitt-romney