Heart

Tuesday night was dinner with "dog friends."  One of the couples is owned by a Yellow lab.  We started talking about Murphy and I said she was all heart.  And they said their lab is all about food.  I laughed.  But truly, I am convinced that while Murphy has all her organs, bones, and muscle, she is all heart.  

From the first moment I held her on the drive home from Washington, DC, she demonstrated her extraordinarily large heart.  I'd told my friend, Mary, that I would put Murphy in the back, thinking all dogs rode in the back of the car.  At the time I had an Izuzu Trooper, but kept the back seat up.  After holding on to the adorable pup for awhile, I put her in back.  And within minutes, she was back on my lap, leaping through the seats, landing exactly where she wanted to be.  Mary, ever the lab breeder, had warned me, saying labs are not in the back dogs.  

For almost 15 years Murphy has done everything possible to make sure she is in the front seat.  She has crawled onto my mother's lap.  Leapt onto my father's.  Wormed her way onto friend's unsuspecting laps.  I have had her on my lap from Seattle to Whitefish, Montana.

And she still tries.

I think the car/lap thing is just an example of how much she wants to be a part of the family, her tribe, the pack.  She sees herself as the center of that universe, the lynchpin of our daily life.  

Amazingly Sage is the same way.  All heart.  And that is the way I think it should be.  We give each other our hearts.

Murphy's day.