Mr. Boots on the go

Honestly, just look at that sweet face. And those boots - please observe their cuteness! And now squint your eyes and peer at the screen a little more closely. See that left paw? No, not your left; his left. See how his toes are kind of spread out, as if he's gripping the upholstery of that rear seat in our minivan as if someone's just about to hit an eject button and catapult him up into the rainclouds hovering over our city on this April afternoon?

Hershey does not enjoy a car ride. Wimzie, now - there was a dog who even learned how to spell C-A-R and R-I-D-E. At the end of her life, we had to take to saying things like, "You know that rolling box that achieves forward propulsion through the intricacies of an internal combustion engine? Well, we need to get in that thing and go buy a gallon of milk."

And then there's Zuzu, who has already learned the deep pleasures of barking at bicyclists, motorcyclists and people pushing baby strollers as we zoom by. Her long, houndy ears flap around her head like dish cloths on a clothesline and every hair of her elegant mustache goes all a-bristle with excitement: Car ride? A CAR RIDE??!! You betcha! When? Whenarewegoing? Rightnow? Rightnowarewegoing? All expressed in a high-pitched yapping that could deafen your ears and quite possibly stop a clock.

But Hershey's different. Car rides, he clearly indicates, make him feel ishy in the tummy. He tolerates them. He has no desire to hang his head out the window, tongue lolling. He will look out the window -- firmly closed -- but that's only to peer anxiously at the passing landscape to see if it looks anything at all like home. When we finally have the car parked safely in the driveway, he scrambles out as soon as the door opens and high-tails it for the back door. He does everything but kiss the ground.

So that's why I was so pleased to capture this picture of him nervously gripping the edge of the seat, it is true. But also smiling and holding his head up. His smile does look a bit fixed, like a middle-aged woman accidentally running into her husband's much younger second wife in the liquor store when she is buying a bottle of chardonnay to spend the weekend with and the new bride is buying some champagne to celebrate the happy couple's six month anniversary, but it is a smile nonetheless. Which is, you know, better than barfing on the carpet.