Golden Buddies
 

     We have been a Golden family for fifteen years. Ever since my husband found through research that Goldens were ideal family dogs, we were sold. How ideal they really are I had yet to learn.
     We were on our third golden dog at the time. Rufus, our original golden had died last summer at the age of twelve. Currently, we had Corky, our two-year-old female, and Rocket, our nine-month-old male.
     My husband was off on a hunting trip with Corky. That left me home with our eager to please puppy. It was a pleasant autumn afternoon and my oldest son, his wife, and our six-month-old grandson were out for a visit. Our grandson Stephen had never shown the slightest fear of our dogs. On the contrary, he delighted in crawling over to them and laying on them. This particular afternoon he had an array of baby toys strewn on the carpet in the living room. Rocket, who had been given a new rawhide bone was greatly interested in the toys. He minded when I told him no, though, and wandered over to a corner of the living room to chew his bone.
     By and by Rocket had chewed the knot off the end of his bone and started pushing it with his nose toward the baby. One could see from his actions that he was offering it to the baby, "Here, try this, it's really good!"
     The baby, taking notice of this new toy, rapidly crawled over to the knot, grabbed it and put it in his mouth before my astonished daughter-in-law could cry, "No!"
     The rawhide knot was taken from Stephen and he continued to play with his toys, chewing particularly on a spongy puzzle piece in the shape of a number seven. Then, the baby stopped chewing and held out the puzzle piece to Rocket as if to say, "Now you try this, it's good too!"
     Sure enough, Rocket had that puzzle piece in his mouth before we could stop either of them.
     My golden dogs have never even curled their lips in a snarl at my grand son, even if patted roughly. Sometimes Stephen decides to go to their food dishes while they are eating and feed them their dinner nugget by nugget. They are the highlight of my grandson's visits here, the first thing he does when he arrives is open the back door and say, "Dogs come!" They really are pure gold and best buddies with my grandson.