A Dog's Life

The transport van makes a three-point turn after dropping off someone and the headlights pick out a yellow lab sleeping at the end of the driveway. It gets up with a start, it must think we are coming straight at it, and starts to bark. The van reverses and the dog relaxes. Ah, barking at them is making them go away. It lets out a few final barks for good measure and settles down to sleep again, on the concrete driveway, pressed up against the gate, as if trying to get as close as possible to a world it couldn't reach because it's people were comfortably tucked inside their house.

And I think of my dogther, and how I will soon be home. And of how she must be asleep in my bed at this moment, snuggled up against her Daddy. She is lucky. And I am lucky too, to have her.