Man's Best Friend

I am not a dog lover and my husband is positively phobic. But in Maine we have dogs or shall I say the dogs have us.

This weekend, the Tolls are in Colorado so DD and Louie are in residence here on the deck or, once it began to rain, in my house. DD is fairly independent but Louie is a complete sissy. Once the thunder starts to roll, he scratches at the screen door, begging to be let in. He even follows me from room to room as I close the windows. I don't let him in my bedroom--he stinks!--but he sits patiently outside the door waiting until I finish working at my desk. If I'm in the kitchen, he parks himself in the middle of the floor only moving when I need to open the refrigerator or the dishwasher.

This is the closest I've ever come to owning a dog and it's certainly the closest I ever want to come. When I was young, my brother and I periodically asked for a dog but the answer from my parents was always no. Supposedly dogs would make noise and frighten patients in my father's office but, who knows, maybe my mom and dad were afraid of dogs. Like Steve.