A Picture of Hope

Most evenings when I'm getting dinner ready, this is my view from the kitchen:

This dog is 7 years old.  He's an old, wise 7-year old.  He was taken straight from his mother into our home.  He knows me pretty well.  He knows I'm not big into sharing.  (With a dog, anyway.)  It's few and far between when this old dog gets people-food from the kitchen.  Occasionally he'll be invited in to "vacuum" the kitchen floor when I make a mess.  It's certainly not a daily event.  But this dog clings daily to the hope.  The hope of dropped food.  The hope of an invitation to partake of even a morsel of people-food.  He makes those eyes look so innocent, so unaware of my ways, so pleading, so sweet, so hopeful.  Sometimes it even works, because...well, just look at those hopeful eyes.

So yesterday I took this picture of him when he showed me those hopeful eyes.  I rewarded those hopeful eyes with a blinding flash, that made him do this:

But he stayed there anyway.  That sweet boy just may have hit the sweet spot of my heart and he just may have been tossed a hunk of chicken.  And you know what that means:  it means that tonight hope will continue to spring eternal, and it means I will have this same view when I make dinner.

He is a knucklehead.  He sheds too much.  He stinks too often.  But I do love him.  And I love his illustration of hope.