Just before the election (you know.. the election? It was in all of the papers) I wrote a post about my disbelief that we were actually on the verge of electing an African-American as president. This led to some e-mail exchanges with several people who were as surprised and elated as I was. One of the emails came from Micheal C. and, as things often do with me, things went  to the dogs because of that basset thing that I do.  Now I’m not going to go all "send me your dog pix and I’ll post them", that’s John Cole’s thing,  but Michael sent along a glorious picture of his assistance dog Rufus that’s too good to not share.

I have a particular fondness for Golden Retrievers; my parent’s last two, Hobie and Buckwheat, were two of the most wonderful and loving dogs I ever knew. We had been through Brittany Springer Spaniels and German Shorthairs (we did a lot of hunting) and they were all great dogs, but Goldens are the closet thing to dog perfection that exists.

Here’s Rufus. He’s perfect.

rufus.jpg

*"The dog was created specially for children. He is the god of frolic. " ~Henry Ward Beecher