He’s indoor/outdoor—our Buster. Like some rugs.

But plush. I’m always pawing through the fluff, digging down in, snugging.

Other people’s dogs, the skulking, slink-around kind, just the thinnest skin of hair, look too sad. They’re just ribs and skulk. It’s too off-putting. It’s mean to think this, I know. They didn’t have a say in their inherited traits, any more than you and I did with ours.

There was a Patty I loved, though—Jim and Valerie’s Patty. No hair to speak of, but in endearingness, a close second to babies. And now we get Lulu sometimes. Bald as a piglet, almost, she comes along with the Pittsburghers. She’s a mere mound of wriggles, her nakedness exposed. Pitiful. And it’s like she doesn’t know. She clambers onto laps like they’re rightfully hers and your heart crumbles.

The saving grace is her ears, nappy and lustrous and silky. She has to drag them along. You can flip them about, twirl them, nuzzle the luxury pile. That part of her rug—her floppy ears—is shag.

(Credit for Lulu photo: Akiko)