Gratified Dogs

After nearly a week of being sick, staring up at the ceiling from my spot on the couch, wrapped in blankets, hardly able to speak or breath, Duncan finally coaxed me outside for an early afternoon stroll in the park. It was a magnificent day, sunny and bright and as fragrant as any Spring I can remember, and Dunc was content to walk slowly by my side, leading me from one brilliant blossoming tree to the next, and then finally, when I was winded and needed to sit in the shade, he hunkered down beside me, the baseball we'd found locked securely between his paws where he could find it and gnaw on it as it seemed to want him to do. He rested his weight against me and watched me carefully. And when I laid down beside him and smiled and thanked him for pulling me across the street to a place where the grass and sunshine and a cool breeze were waiting for us, he flipped onto his back, smiled a goofy smile and rolled until I joined him, rolling and huffing and wrapping the grass around us, unconcerned with the way it caught and stuck to us, happy, instead, to be together, to spin like gratified dogs under the clear April sky.