Lie down with dogs, get up with nice good-morning kisses.

Dogs are a huge part of my life. They are fascinating. Show me another creature that will willingly and without conquest of them view you as their superior, be incredibly thankful when you give them a dead fish to eat, and save Timmy from drowning in the well by attempting to speak human.

Every day when I get home from work, I pull into our tuck-under garage. It's a weird setup, but basically I walk into the basement, go straight for about 25 feet, hang a left and go up a flight of stairs to the main level of the house.

We also have cats, and the litter boxes are downstairs, while the cats have the run of the house. Of course, this necessitates a cat door in this door at the top of the stairs. Either that, or we follow the cats around with a little cup to collect their urine. We chose the door. Sue us.

This, of course, means that when I look up that flight of stairs, I'm looking up at the door with the cat door in it. And it never fails. Every single time when I look up that flight of stairs after a hard day's work, there is at least one dog looking back at me through that door. It all depends on whether one of them has detected my arrival earlier and was able to block out the other by the simple expedient of sticking his head through the door first.

Needless to say with two dogs, when I arrive at the top of the stairs and open the door, I'm showered with doggie kisses and made to feel generally like I'm the center of the universe. Then I turn the corner and walk 10 feet to the doorway to the kitchen, where my wife rules.

And suddenly I'm not the center of the universe anymore. Go do this with that child. And when you're done, see what you can do about fixing the stinky water. And then shovel the snow that the @#$)(*&"*!!!! snow removal guy left in front of the garage.

I love my dogs. For a moment in every day (actually several, but I'll mention the others later), they make me feel like an emperor.