Just about every morning Tucker & I leave the house around 8:15 or so and hike the half-mile trail through woods and up the hill to my parents’ for a cup of coffee and a breakfast visit. On the way we pass the frog pond, where Tucker rousts the natives and stomps around in the tall grass for a bit.

At the top of the hill I take his leash off and he makes two or three rounds all the way to the house and back to me while I slog up past the veggie garden, the raspberry patch, the pool and the back/front lawn. He has short little legs, but covers more ground in less time than I can, by orders of magnitude.

Once inside, he breaks straight for the living toom. He doesn’t even bother with the formality of greeting anyone who might be sitting just inside the kitchen door. He bolts for the big plate glass window before my dad’s armchair, and takes up his sentinel post on lookout for doves, chipmunks, robins, juncos, hummingbirds or whatever might be out there. He clocks in at various positions along the window by pressing his nose prints into the glass.

This is Tucker’s idea of heaven.