Puppy Therapy

In order to lighten the mood around here, I am following the lead of my beautiful goddaughter Jamie.  She knows that the world's best accessory, guaranteed to make people smile, is a tiny baby puppy that they can cuddle and then immediately return to its owner with no worries about cleaning up its potty training mishaps or training it not to eat food off the coffee table.

Jamie brought her friend's puppy over to my mom's house last weekend.  It's impossible to be in a bad mood when you're looking at that little face.  Even my dad, who swears up and down that he doesn't like dogs, got into the act.

By the way, my dad is the only family member I can say absolutely anything about on this blog. Why?  He still thinks computers are a fad.  He's never turned one on in his life and still runs his business using a twenty-pound manual typewriter and a filing cabinet.  There's no chance he'll read this and call me up and demand that I take down embarrassing pictures of him, like this one of him getting a makeover from my cousin Julie:

Very freeing.  

(I guarantee my sisters are looking at this and shaking their heads about me having a no-attention-span kind of afternoon).

Anyway, back to the puppy. Some days I just get overwhelmed by the sadness and misery in the news and the struggles that people I love are suffering.  On days like that, I wish there was a store in the mall where you could go in and pay $10 and hold a puppy for a couple of hours.  I think that might help an awful lot.

Yeah, if you can't look at that and smile, I'd suggest going in and seeing a doctor.