Sidewalk Art by Sparkle Girl

This column first appeared in the April 2012 issue of Forsyth Family magazine:

At our house, Rule No. 7 is “When you get up from the kitchen table, push in the chair.” This rule was established, one, to make for a more orderly kitchen, and, two, to keep Poos the cat off the kitchen table. If a chair wasn’t pushed in, the wily connoisseur of milk, cheese and bacon would jump from the floor onto the seat of the chair. From there, it was an easy stretch to the table top and its promise of gastronomic delights.

When it comes to pushing in the chair after getting up, Garnet, Sparkle Girl and Doobins have an unblemished record. My own record is, shall we say, spotty. So, from time to time as I went about my business in the rest of the house, I would hear Doobins, upon entering the kitchen, shout, “Poos!” I knew what that meant. When I went into the kitchen, I would find a scene that varied only in the particulars. One time, Poos might have his head in Doobin’s milk glass, licking that last dash in the bottom. Another time, he might be at Sparkle Girl’s plate, eating a morsel of bacon left because it was too crisp for her taste.

A simple request to do the right thing meant nothing to Poos. Unfazed by commands to get off the table, he might look up with a “surely, you jest” expression before returning to the savory task at hand. So, I would pick him up, plunk him down on the floor and slide in the chair. Sometimes, Doobins might thoughtfully point out that the culprit chair – the weak link in our defenses that enabled Poos to mount his assault – was the very one that I sat in while drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper.

Garnet got Poos – Poos Maloos was his full name – before Sparkle Girl and Doobins came into the world. So, for them, he had always been there. When I came along, Poos was in the prime of life. When I was fixing his breakfast, he might glide around my feet in his excitement. But I never I had to worry about stepping on him because I knew he would slip away before my foot touched the floor. At night, he liked to go out into the darkness and bring back presents that he would lay on the front porch for us to admire in the morning light.

Time, as is its custom, extracted daily tolls from Poos, and, in recent days, he had become less nimble. More than once, I accidentally stepped on a tail I didn’t realize was there when fixing his food. And he became less interested in adventuring and took to devoting more of his time to stretching out in the spot of sun on the back of the couch. Eventually, strident health problems arose, and the day came when it was time to take Poos to the vet’s office for the final time.

Since Poos has been gone, holes have opened up in the house. One is on the back of the couch. Another is under the spigot in the bathtub where he liked to get a drip-by-drip drink of water. I think about him when I come home at night and open the door. From habit, I still open it just a crack at first to make sure he’s not on the other side, ready to shoot out into the night. And then I remember. With Poos’ loss, even the maddening things he once did now seem endearing. As Doobins said, “I miss yelling at Poos for getting on the table.”

By Doobins

This column first appeared in the March 2012 issue of Forsyth Family magazine:

Every now and then, I come upon a gem in my reading that I keep ever after. Such was the case when reading about a man who lived out in the country with his son. They didn’t have much money, the man said, so they had to do without a lot of things. But, without fail, he took his son into town every Saturday afternoon for a scoop of ice cream. “Everybody needs something to look forward to,” the man said.

I had no doubt that I had heard some version of that truth many times before. That time, though, it made an impression, and, ever since, when something brings to mind the power of positive expectations to dispel gloom or simply to add sparkle to the days between now and then, I picture the man and his son going into the drug store after a week filled with lots of dust and hard work and the soda jerk reaching across the lunch counter and handing the boy a refreshing cone of ice cream.

I suspect that part of the reason the man and boy have stayed with me over the years is that the images are so satisfying to imagine. It’s also a reminder that whatever you’re looking forward to doesn’t have to be something big. I think it making an impression also has to do with timing. After I was out on my own, I was struggling with something when the thought came to me, “Why didn’t anyone tell me that life was going to be like this?” As time passed, I realized that, when I was growing up, adults in my life had indeed pointed out that life could be like this. It wasn’t that no one had told me; it was that I hadn’t been ready to see it.

I have another satisfying image that I associate with the importance of timing. It comes from a story about Miyomoto Musashi, the renowned Japanese swordsman and author of The Book of Five Rings who observed, “There is timing in everything.” As the story goes, Musashi arrived early for a fight and climbed a tree. After his opponents arrived, he stayed hidden as they waited and waited. Once the wait discombobulated them, he jumped down and dispatched them. Now, when I’m wound up about something not happening when I want it to and remember that waiting can bring positive results, I picture him dropping out of the tree.

The old saying, “We all eat a peck of dirt before we die” gave me the image that goes with the truth that life brings pain to everyone. It came to mind the other day when I read a story about people criticizing a celebrity who ended up in the hospital suffering from “exhaustion” after her husband left her. She’s beautiful and rich, the critics were saying, “How bad could her life be?” An absurd thing to say, of course. And, given our tendency to imagine that, if only we had power, wealth, fame or beauty, life would be so much better, I could see how being beautiful and rich could make the emotional pain that life inevitably brings even more devastating.

Perhaps a dear friend will call her up and invite her out for a cone of ice cream.

Diorama by Sparkle Girl

The other day, Garnet was busy, so a friend and I took the kids to IHOP for supper. When it comes to food, Doobins is not big on frills, so he ordered a plain, unembellished pancake.

Sparkle Girl loves trying new things – she asked for a fondue pot for Christmas last year – and enjoys all sorts of foods – getting her to eat fruits and vegetables was never an issue. So ordering in any restaurant is a matter of deciding what wonderful combination of tastes sounds most appealing today. After exclaiming over all the delectable possibilities, she chose a four-pancake platter of blueberry pancakes topped with blueberry compote and whipped cream.

When the plates arrived, Doobins carefully applied just the right amount of maple syrup, and the kids tucked into their treats. For Sparkle Girl, a particularly satisfying food experience often calls for pauses to smile and to comment on how fabulous her food is. About two pancakes worth in, she stopped to announce that these pancakes were so delicious that she wanted to have them for her birthday supper. “Wait,” I said. “When your mother fixed pot roast, mashed potatoes and corn the other day, didn’t you say that you wanted that for your birthday supper?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I loved that dinner.”

When Sparkle Girl ordered a four-pancake platter, I fully expected her to reach capacity while pancakes and blueberries remained, so I wasn’t surprised when, about three pancakes worth in, she went in a few bites from eating with gusto to eating in slow motion to full stop.

I think I am safe in saying that, when she said, “I’m so full, I can’t eat another bite,” I noted a touch of regret in her voice. On the way to the car, she lamented about her inability to eat every tasty morsel. About halfway home, she said, “I’m all digested now.” Joking, I said, “Would you like to go back and see if they still have the rest of your pancakes?” “That would be great,” she said.

When we got home and told Garnet about Sparkle Girl now being faced with the tough choice of pot roast or blueberry pancakes for her birthday supper, Garnet pointed out that, after a restaurant meal of steak, blooming onion, and baked sweet potato glazed with brown sugar and butter, Sparkle Girl had said she wanted that for her birthday supper.

“Oh, yeah,” Sparkle Girl said. “I loved that dinner.”

Sparkle Girl’s 13th birthday arrives in February so figuring out what food treats she wants to have for her birthday was not an idle exercise. After giving the matter some thought for a day or two, she announced that she had come up with a solution. On her birthday, we could go to IHOP for breakfast, and, for supper, Garnet could fix pot roast.

“Chocolate fondue for dessert?” I asked.

“That would be good,” she said.

Painting by Garnet Goldman

When I was young, I didn’t understand how a man could go out in public wearing shorts and shoes with black socks. The dictates of fashion were clear. With shorts, the acceptable options included sandals with no socks and casual shoes with white socks. Black crew socks were a definite misstep, and regular shoes worn with over-the-calf black socks were an absolute affront. How could a grown man commit such a fashion transgression?

Did he simply not know any better? Did he have no self-respect? And what about the wives of husbands who gallivanted about in public like that? Were they perturbed? Were they suffering in silence? Or had they grabbed their husbands by the ankles and begged them not to bring shame on the family by sallying forth thus attired?

Getting married gave me a sense of where at least one wife stands in such matters. Garnet regularly lets attire that someone less charitable might call too casual go unremarked. She says nothing when I head out to such places as the hardware store dressed in sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt bought in 1987. Only when I’m going somewhere a tad more formal will she gently suggest corrective action.

“You know, you look really good in your green shirt,” she may say. “Have you thought about wearing it?” Or perhaps, “You do know that T-shirt that has holes under the arms, don’t you?” Ever helpful, Doobins may say, “Yeah, they remind me of the Grand Canyon.”

Because I considered the shorts-and-black-socks combination beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior, I had no notion of where Garnet might stand on that particular issue. And then came the day this past summer when I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed with a pair of black crew socks in hand and my sandals on the floor. When I realized what I was on the verge of doing, I stopped, momentarily aghast. As I thought about it, though, it came to me: “You know, I don’t care anymore.”

At long last, I saw that I might have been wrong about those men. It had nothing to do with a lack of self-respect. While I had been wondering how they could trample over the fashion sensibilities of countless others, they may have simply been living free from the constraints of fashion rules they didn’t care about. Exhilarated by a sense of newfound freedom, I slipped on the black socks and sandals and headed out into the world.

Garnet said nothing about me joining the Shorts with Black Socks Club. The only time she has brought up socks at all was the morning I came home from a yard sale wearing shorts and sandals with a black sock on one foot and no sock on the other. When she asked what was going on, I told her that one sock that had gotten wet and that I had taken it off but that taking off the remaining sock seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

“You were out in public with one sock on and one sock off?” she said. “I’m impressed.”

By Garnet Goldman

We don’t own a dishwasher, which is fine with me. I don’t particularly enjoy washing pots with caked food that puts up a struggle. For the most part, though, I like washing dishes. It clears the mind and provides a sense of accomplishment not so readily found elsewhere. One minute, you’re holding a Garfield glass with a puddle of milk at the bottom that no self-respecting 9-year-old would dream of using. The next minute, you’re holding a shiny, clean glass eager to be called into service for Mr. Doobins’ next glass of refreshing milk.

The other day, two slender crystal glasses were among the dishes sitting on the counter waiting to be washed. Although they were sold as liqueur glasses, we use them primarily for the kids’ M&M treats. The danger with M&M’s, of course, is that, once you start eating them, you keep on eating them until the bag is empty. By filling each of the glasses with M&M’s for Sparkle Girl and Doobins, we have some hope of limiting the amount they eat. Plus, the M&M’s look really good in those glasses. The glasses have been in my life for more than 30 years. I bought them when I was living in San Francisco to use for Frangelico.

I don’t think about San Francisco every time I look at them but, this time, I did. I like having things that are both satisfying on their own and that have the power to trigger pleasant memories. When the M&M glasses are clean, they share a shelf with two blue ceramic bowls that I bought on a particularly fun day-trip poking around pottery studios in Seagrove. That shelf has a lot of memory triggers. It also serves as home to plates, bowls, cups and mugs that once belonged to Garnet’s beloved grandmother Debo.

At Christmas, I pull out a ceramic bowl that my friend Mike Callaghan made. It was one of my favorites, and, after it got dropped I couldn’t bear to throw it out. So I glued it back together. When you fill it with Christmas ornaments, you don’t see the scars. Down in our basement is an electric shoe buffer that belonged to my grandfather Daddy Ralph. It has rotating heads at each end covered with what makes me think of shag carpeting. The black buffer is for black shoes and the red one for brown shoes. I don’t ever use it but it reminds me of Daddy Ralph and of the days when polishing my shoes on Saturday was an integral part of getting ready for church on Sunday.

Draped on the couch in the living room is a bright, cheerful quilt – yellow is the dominant color – that someone my father had helped gave him when I was a teen-ager. When I went off to college, he gave it to me to use on my bed there. Ever since, the quilt has gone with me wherever I moved. I don’t think of my father every time I look at the quilt. But sometimes I do, and the memory is a little gift.

Flight into Egypt by Garnet Goldman

I know you need turkey to make Thanksgiving official and, without question, a freshly roasted turkey looks and smells great.

I care about turkey on Thanksgiving mainly, though, because it’s essential for making gravy. For me, the true heart of the meal is stuffing and mashed potatoes awash in gravy. Other particularly appealing attractions include the green-bean casserole, ham and the hot sauce for the ham that I make using my grandmother’s recipe. Oh, my!

All of which means that, although I like turkey just fine the rest of the year, on Thanksgiving, I’m reluctant to squander valuable space on the plate – and in the stomach – that could be more productively devoted to other treasures. So I take just enough turkey to make the plate official.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. And not just because of the pumpkin pie. I like its simplicity. I’m all for giving thanks. I have found, time and again, that remembering to focus on being grateful can have an almost magical power to transform my attitude. One second, I’m mired in some swamp of negativity. I remember to be thankful for something, and, instantly, I’m in the neighborhood of chipper.

Ultimately, I think, gratitude is closer to the truth of life than ingratitude is. One of the things I appreciate about Garnet is that, throughout the year, she is really good about prompting me to remember to be grateful. I will be complaining about some irritation or perceived wrong, and she will say, “We have a lot to be grateful for.” If I’m really hot about something, I might shrug that off. More often, it shifts my perspective.

Certainly, I have a lot for which to be grateful. Some of the gifts I have been given, such as Garnet and the kids, are right in front of my face every day. Day to day, I may not think about many others. Some of those gifts are quite profound, such as being born to parents who put the life of the spirit at the center of their lives. In general, I have had amazingly good fortune when it comes to family, friends, neighbors and the other people in my life. Thanksgiving is a good time to stop and remember to give thanks for such remarkable gifts.

This Thanksgiving, I also want to give thanks for all the work that people I will never meet have done – the people who invented air conditioning and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups as well as the countless people who did all the work of inventing words and reaching a consensus on a common language. Can you imagine how much more troublesome everyday life would be if we were still arguing about what to call a tree?

And I want to give thanks for the unexpected bonuses that life delivers. The other day, Mr. Doobins stepped on something as we were walking across a shopping-center parking lot, and, once we got to the car, the first order of business was wiping it off his shoe. He inherited his mother’s keen sense of smell, and, afterward, he said, “Phew! That smelled like a dead horse rubbed with a cigar.”

Here’s hoping that all of your Thanksgiving smells are far more savory.

In the car one day, I was griping to Garnet about the vexing behavior of politicians in Washington when Sparkle Girl piped up from the back seat that she thought they should move the capital to Hawaii. With everything being so beautiful in Hawaii, she thought, people would automatically treat each other better there.

An excellent idea, I said. A little while later, Sparkle Girl asked whether there was any chance that, if they started working on it now, the capital could be in Hawaii by next year. Wondering where that question came from, I said, “Why do you ask?”

“Well, at school, the eighth-grade class goes to our nation’s capital,” she said. Ah. All became clear. If the capital were in Hawaii a year from now, Sparkle Girl would get to go to the place that, in recent days, has topped her list of places she wants to visit one day. (By “one day,” I mean “tomorrow if we would let her.”)

It galls Sparkle Girl that, at the advanced age of 12, she can still count on the fingers of one hand the states she has visited and that she has yet to set foot outside of the United States. With her mother and me showing no signs of slaking her thirst for travel by, say, booking her on a “Penguins of Antarctica” or “Paris in the Spring” tour, she bides her time until we come to our senses by adding to her list of places that offer fun possibilities. Someone tells a story about the grandeur of Yosemite, and she says, “Ooh! I want to go there.” Savoring a piece of kappa maki sushi, she imagines that the sushi in Japan must be even tastier and decides that she wants to pop over on the trip she has long been planning to China.

Mr. Doobins has expressed zero desire to join his sister on any of her travels. In his imagination, he thinks nothing of zipping across galaxies to planets light years away to quell beasts terrorizing the locals. On Earth, though, he enjoys being at home. More than once, he has turned down the offer of a trip to Mayberry for a scoop of ice cream because staying put was more attractive.

One day, as he lounged on our bed with crossed legs and fingers laced behind his head as he leaned back on the pillows, he announced that he liked living here and that he planned to stay with us forever. The day may come, though, when staying with us looks different. Animals that Garnet considers “dear” hold the same allure for her that far-flung places hold for Sparkle Girl, and she wants to have far more than a dog and cat one day. (See the “tomorrow” note above.) Undeterred by my observation that a herd of Nubian goats would, no doubt, run afoul of city ordinances, she has been talking about getting land in the country once both kids graduate from high school.

Maybe Mr. Doobins could keep the house in Winston-Salem and I could slip out for a visit at feeding time.

A new dog has joined our family. Her name is Faye.

A woman with an animal-rescue group in Mocksville found Faye on the side of the road. When we went out to Mocksville to meet Faye, I asked the woman why she had named her that.

“She looked like a Faye,” the woman said.

We thought so, too, and kept the name.

As with every found-on-the-side-of-the-road dog, background is pure speculation. She looks like what you might get if Italian greyhound genes were put in charge of the legs, and overall size and yellow Labrador retriever genes were put in charge of the coloration, the head and the disposition. When Garnet saw the expression on a fawn the other day, she decided that Faye must have some deer genes as well.

As soon as Faye came into the house, she made it clear that she was Garnet’s dog. She awarded equal second-tier status to Sparkle Girl and Doobins. I have the No. 4 position all to myself.

That’s fine with me. Still feeling the loss of His Dogness, I felt a floaty detachment around Faye in those early days. I don’t know whether that played a role or whether she was simply destined to be Garnet’s dog. In any case, I’m happy that Garnet and the kids are happy. And I still get to take a dog for walks without having to fret about somehow being disloyal to Buster’s memory.

Getting a new dog happened sooner than I expected. If it had been up to Sparkle Girl and Doobins, we would have gone out the next day and gotten a new dog. I told them, though, that I needed a little time. They understood that. Every now and then one of them would ask whether I was ready yet. No, I would say.

Then one Saturday afternoon I said I could start looking. Our list of specific requirements was short. Certainly, we wanted a dog that everyone liked. His Dogness had been a tad big for Mr. Doobins, and he wanted a dog more his size. Garnet wanted an affectionate dog. Sparkle Girl was easy. As long as it was a dog she liked, she didn’t care about size, color or breed.

I expected the process to take a while. As it happened, we met Faye the next day. From the beginning, she fit right in. Garnet keeps going around saying, “She’s an angel.” I wouldn’t go that far. She makes funny noises sometimes when she dreams and, for reasons that remain a mystery, she is skittish around a friend who is one of the sweetest people around.

But we were definitely lucky. Not a single “uh-oh” characteristic has presented itself, and Poos the cat is OK with the arrangement. The Official Cat Code of Conduct required Poos to express disgruntlement for a couple of days. But, once he fulfilled those obligations, we came in on the scene of Faye and Poos stretched out with Poos’ tail flicking back and forth across Faye’s face.

I knew that any agreements Sparkle Girl and Doobins made about taking responsibility for feeding and walking Faye wouldn’t necessarily hold up, but I thought it was important to have them on the record. As it turned out, both have been really good about taking care of her.

From time to time, Mr. Doobins feels burdened by his responsibilities. But that can be quite entertaining. Because I am the first person up most days, I usually take Faye out for her morning walk. When I got up one morning, Mr. Doobins was already up. I told him that he was coming with us. Wanting a more leisurely approach to the day, he declined. I told him that I wasn’t offering that option.

Once we were on the sidewalk, I told him that he could be in charge of picking up newspapers and putting them on people’s porches, something that I routinely do. That made him feel even more put upon, and, as he carried the first paper up to the porch, he said, “I’m getting older by the minute.”

A couple of days later, he was up when I got up again. Stunned by his run of ill fortune when I told him that he was coming with us, he said, “I’m only going to walk on one foot.”

We put His Dogness to sleep.

When my friend Mike found Buster, as His Dogness was known around the house, standing on the side of the road in Stokes County, the vet estimated that Buster was 1 to 1½ years old. Add that to the 16 years that he was with me and he was at least 17 — an impressive run for a 50-pound dog.

Buster was a good friend.

When he came into my life, I was in a rough patch and looking for a dog, in part, because I thought taking it on serious walks might make me feel better. Mike knew that, and, when he saw Buster looking as if he was waiting for a bus, Mike picked him up and called me.

“I found your dog,” he said.

He had indeed.

I was glad that Buster was a boy dog because I wanted to be able to name my dog after Buster Keaton, the comedian whose movies had made me laugh during an earlier rough patch. Having Buster around made a big difference. When I came home from work, he would give me a first-class greeting at the door, and we would go for a walk in Old Salem.

Buster was an idiosyncratic dog. When he saw a vapor trail, he would bark and bark. My neighbor, Mr. Whitfield, liked to joke that an alien space ship had accidentally left Buster behind and he was barking to get their attention.

At some point, Buster decided he would no longer drink water inside the house. If he was thirsty, he had to go out and drink from the stainless-steel bowl that birds liked to use to bathe.

Mostly, though, he was remarkably easygoing. Sometimes on walks, when he stopped to sniff something, I would start looking at the clouds. After a minute or two, I might come back to Earth to find Buster patiently standing there, waiting for me to finish my reveries.

I always thought it was too bad that Garnet, Sparkle Girl and Doobins never knew the young, carefree Buster. By the time they came along, he was struggling — stiffness in his hips, deafness, failing eyesight. Kidney failure was the big one. Eventually, the build-up of toxins in his system led to what looked a lot like dementia.

Sometimes, I would come upon Buster standing in the corner, staring at the wall. Other times, he would flip out, frantically scratching at the front door as if he hadn’t been out in hours and hours, even though, minutes ago, we had just come in from a walk.

Even though dealing with him after he got sick could be trying, Garnet, Sparkle Girl and Doobins came to love him, too. When Buster was in distress, Doobins took a lot of responsibility for trying to make things better for him, and Garnet was a sucker for those moments when he would come up and burrow his head into her looking for a scratch.

As his condition worsened, I spent a lot of time fretting about whether the misery he was experiencing was offset by the times when he was enjoying his life.

After a particularly bad day during which he could not find comfort, it was clear that it was time.

My friend Mike died some months back, and Buster being gone made me feel the loss of Mike even more acutely. I would have liked nothing more than to drive up to Stokes County and sit with Mike on his porch.

It helped when my friend Lauren said she liked to imagine Mike and Buster taking a walk together in heaven.

Garnet and the kids took Buster’s loss harder than I expected. In pondering that, I came to think it had something to do with self-centeredness, somehow thinking that nobody else appreciated him as much as I did.

Doobins and I were in the car one day when, without preamble, Doobins said, “I wish I was in heaven with Buster.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. Deflecting it a bit seemed like a good idea, so I said, “What did you like about Buster?”

“I liked that I loved him,” Doobins said.

I had expected something more mundane, and, at first, his statement struck me as nonsensical.

You don’t just love something — you have reasons for loving it.

The more I thought about it, though, the more profound it seemed.

Although we may be able to name this or that reason, in the end, we care about something because of what it brings out in us — joy, a sense of satisfaction, love.

I miss Buster. At the same time, I am grateful that I have Garnet, Sparkle Girl and Doobins to share that loss. When Buster came into my life, I didn’t know that such a gift awaited me.

GROW YOUR LOVE by Garnet Goldman

To my sleep-fogged mind, the noise that woke me in the middle of the night sounded like cats fighting outside the bedroom window. A moment of quiet followed. Then, a noise unlike the first broke the silence. This one had an even eerier edge to it, and I found myself imagining ghosts and ripping shrouds. A moment later, I identified the source of the mystery noises. They were coming from the stomach of Faye, the dog asleep at the foot of the bed.

That wasn’t the first time that Faye’s nocturnal broadcasts have awakened me. In the middle of the night, such gastric turmoil can be unsettling. More than once, I woke up worrying that some mishap had befallen the children. Once I’m awake, the sounds can be entertaining. Their variety is remarkable. No gastric muttering sounds like any that has come before.

On this particular night, as the assorted clangings and swooshings burbled along, it occurred to me that some sound-effects technician might pay good money for a recording of Faye’s stomach in action. In the light of day, the enterprise lost its appeal. Should I ever decide to record household sounds, I think I could better serve the world by recording Doobins when he’s watching The Three Stooges or some other show that he thinks is funny. No matter what my mental state when I hear him laugh, for a moment, I’m happy.

When Garnet and I compared notes in the morning, she, too, thought that the initial emission sounded like dueling cats. When it came to speculating about its origins, our paths diverged. To me, its source was a puzzle. (Faye was rescued from the side of the road, and I tend to attribute her gastrointestinal irregularities to the unknown rigors of her days in the wild.) Garnet found no reason to consider the matter a mystery when a mundane explanation was readily at hand – namely, the mustard-coated scrap of bread I had torn from the end of a submarine sandwich and given her the day before.

Ah, yes. I had forgotten about that. When Faye joined our household, I announced that feeding human food to a dog was a surefire recipe for creating a nuisance and issued a decree that Faye would subsist on dog food only. I made the same resolution years ago when His Dogness joined my household. Again, the boots of indulgence soon trampled those intentions underfoot. I find Faye particularly handy when it comes to disposing of unwanted pizza crusts.

A slice of individually wrapped cheese stands alone as her favorite treat. When I want to make a cheese sandwich in peace, I peel open the wrapper in super-slow motion in hopes of flying under her cheese-detecting radar. I have yet to be successful. Even when Faye is in the far end of the house, I will hear her jump off the bed in one of the kid’s rooms and hurry my way.

When she comes into the kitchen and looks up at me with those eyes, the needle on the Cute-O-Meter sweeps across the gauge, stopping only after crossing into the “Too Cute to Measure” range. I peel off a strip of cheese and drop it into her awaiting mouth. As Garnet likes to say, “She’s an angel.”