Lucky Dog

Max has two homes: a log cabin in Kentucky with his mother and a cozy 19th-century home in Sewanee with his grandmother and his mother.

In Sewanee, Max loves people and things: his grandmother, on whose bed and with whom he spends much of the day and in her room and on his own bed all night; his mother, whose entrance causes his tail to wag and eyebrows to rise; visitors, including me; raccoon watching in the evening and at night (when they climb to the deck to steal bird food, Max smells them just outside the bedroom door); the heat of a log fire or oil-filled heater; a sprint through through Abbo's Alley across the street, sometimes safe and leashed and sometimes neither safe nor leashed; driving on errands with his mother; eating dog bones; and sleeping abed on his back, some part of his body touching his grandmother's.

Today, while I read aloud a fascinating New York Times article about the study of unknown diseases at NIH and while my friend listened and we both sipped tea and ate delicious homemade biscotti, Max slept.

He's one lucky dog.