2013-08-22 – If Tuesday’s count-your-blessings post didn’t make you want to puke, I’m going to press forward with my new-found positivity. Today I’m going to talk about how much I love my dog Lefty.

He is the bestest dog in the whole wide house.

(Full disclosure: Lefty is the only dog in the house. Sometimes I talk about our cat Poppy as if she were a dog. But that’s not what’s happening here. If I counted Poppy as a dog, Lefty would be the second bester.)

Benefits that accrue to Lefty from being the bestest dog in the whole wide house are as follows:

• He is the first dog to be walked in the morning.
• He is the last dog to be walked at night.
• I actually do some of the walking.
• He gets to eat dog food.
• He gets to be tethered to a really nice blue leash.
• He gets to pee and poop in a very nice park.

Don’t you wish you were Lefty? I do, too. He gets to sleep about 18 hours a day.

Of course, there are downsides. Here are some:

• He can’t ride a bike.
• He can’t ride on public transportation (unless he would wear an aid-dog sign, though I don’t think he could play the part).
• He can’t read Proust (could he relate to this or would he laugh at how humans react to smells, but . . .).
• He can’t laugh.

Lefty is a special dog. He was born in Canada, like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. That’s not a problem for Lefty, like it is for Sen. Cruz, because Lefty has no interest in running for president. Lefty is proud of his Canadian heritage.

His birth family were working dogs and their job was chasing Canada geese from business property in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Lefty vigilantly watches our American skies for Canada geese. I am also suspicious that Lefty may have a trace of beaver blood in him. He loves gnawing the bark off trees. Or is this just some sort of language disability in which he confuses the two meanings of the word “bark”? I do notice that he doesn’t speak much, except to utter the word “bark” repeatedly.

All-in-all, he’s a quasi-lovable package—the bestest in the whole wide house.