How pleasant to find a dog guy who really gets our canine companions. This entry caught my eye remembering one of the best dogs who ever owned me. (Note: each one was best in their time.)

Her "kennel" name was Summer, a pedigreeaad Labrador with better blood lines than me. Her trainer's wife was expecting their first child and they had no insurance so he had to sell some of his stock. She was a year old when I picked her up and headed for the dove fields. A dry year, filling her remarkable nose with dust defeating her radar. But she was pure hunting stock and perservered, though her "started" status for retrieves was more miss than hit.

When we got home, and after she'd gone through all the happy play with my grade-school kids who'd loved her the instant they met her (and vice versa) I was at the kitchen table having coffee. Things quieted down and she lay by the garage door. Then she got up, stretched, walked over to me, and placed one big paw on the top of my foot. I thought she must be deciding to keep me. We had a wonderful decade cut short by a too-early demise.

Thanks for a piece that flashes me back to my winter dog named Summer. And all my others. When I was six years old my grandmother told me Heaven was where all our dogs waited for us. Seventy-three years later I say if dogs don't go to heaven I want to go where dogs go.