Rufus’s Unwrapped Gift
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Hilarious, Heroic, Human Dog
By Crystal Schwanke

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’t merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.
~Edward Hoagland

The sun was barely up that Christmas morning, so most of the light in the living room came from the twinkling strands on the tree. I’d gotten up early to plug it in and bring a little extra magic into the house before my daughter walked down the stairs to open her gifts.

Gifts had been tucked around the base of the tree, under the bottom row of branches, for about a month. Rufus, our senior Boxer mix we’d adopted twelve years prior hadn’t so much as sniffed at them.

That morning was different, though, because he watched as my onesie-clad daughter ripped the paper off her presents, tossed it aside, and marveled at what she found. (Keep reading)