Happiness is a warm puppy

Someone loves her dog
London, ON, October 2008 [Click all images to enlarge]

About these photos: This week's Thematic Photographic theme is happy. I'd love to see your happy-themed photos. To participate, please click here. If you've already shared one, why not share another? There's always another happy to share, right?

Frasier had a playdate with another miniature schnauzer a couple of weeks back. Roscoe's about the same age - 2 - and wears the same red harness, so if we squinted our eyes just so, it was easy to get the two of them confused.

Much to our relief, the two of them got along very well. Although Frasier's the sweetest dog on the planet - our biased assessment, of course - the breed isn't known as the most, um, calm. He wants to meet everyone he encounters on the street, and he'll bark, loudly, incessantly, until we either pull him out of sight or relent and allow him to approach. Once he has a chance to sniff said stranger out, he's happy. His bark is clearly worse that his bite, as he wouldn't harm a fly. But you can seriously go deaf - and get a great workout in your leash-holding arm - when he sees someone new.

So we were more than slightly concerned that he'd have issues with his newfound mirror-image friend. We needn't have worried. They played, hard, both in the house as well as in the fenced-in running area near our house. We let them run themselves ragged in the vain hope that they'd get a good night's sleep. Silly us: they're schnauzers. They convert the energy of the planet's rotation into the ability to leap wall units in a single bound.

But for the the entire afternoon, they were happy to be together. And all of us were happy to be a part of this informal festival of fur. Sometimes, life is just that simple and just that good.

Your turn: Simple things that make for happy moments. Please discuss.