This dog

I am a bit groggy this morning — this candle isn’t really designed to burn at both ends — and Willow seems groggy, too, a little more than a week shy of her 12th birthday, which will make her 84 in dog years if you cotton to that stuff.

She holds her head up, as best she can, as if to say, “If he can be up this early, I guess I can, too” — my canine companion, never very far away unless I’ve left her behind to bring bacon home.

Is she mine, or am I hers? Now there is a question.

We ...