Chapter Twelve Four Years Old

On May 14th, of 2002, Tova turned four years old. Each of her birthdays, Linda either purchased or made a cupcake and placed a candle on it to celebrate.

Remember, this is the dog she thought she couldn’t deal with, bless her.

We did our usual thing of hiking numerous peaks, walking around the pond more times than I want to count and spending time making the kids around the neighborhood happy. It seems that since we bought her, Tova became the neighborhood celebrity, especially with the children. I mean kids of all ages from three to grown ups. Of course, I count them as kids too, especially if they are in touch with their happy child self which is important.

There is one family about seven houses up our block that has three daughters ranging from three to ten. No matter what they are doing outside, they drop everything and come to the curb to pat Tova as we go by. Boy, does she ever eat up the attention. These young ladies ask my permission to get her a dog treat. I think they had their mother buy them just for Tova. They didn’t own a dog. It got so it became competition for the middle and the oldest one, to see who would ask me first. Then that one would go running off into the house and come out with a dog cookie. Boy was she ever spoiled. She would look for the girls when we got near their house, even when they weren’t outside.