Now I know why people love dogs. It's because dogs love like groveling, insanely worshiping, idol prostrating fools. They lick, slobber and fawn all over you. But that's not really it in a nutshell.

I realized what that really was when I returned home from an extended vacation.

I had an epiphany at an extremely low time, emotionally speaking, for me. It was probably a bad time for the dog too.

The dog, a poor stray that somebody heartlessly dumped onto the country gravel roads near our farm, that stray who wandered into our yard and accepted our hospitality with ecstatic joy, that dog who acts like a silly coyote jumping three feet into the air to eat a bee, that dog who jumps into the car and slobbers all over you like you were a lollipop sucking three-year-old grandchild come to visit, that dog who runs up behind you like a bushwhacking bandit and licks your bare arm or leg or, worse yet, your clothed behind, that dog that got into a bug tussle with a skunk last night.

That dog went wacko with welcoming when I returned from a month vacation and made me feel like one person in the world really loved me.