Must love dogs

(One of 2 possible reactions: Ewwwww or Awwwww.)

We have a Sandra Boynton book on Dogs. It's an annoying little book really, it starts off with one dog on page-one barking WOOF and then with every subsequent page adds another dog and another sound. By the time you reach page 8 you'd have barked - Woof, Bow Wow, Arrf, Ruff Ruff, Arrr, Ah-ooooo, Rrrrr, Nnn-Nnn. This is one of Tara's favorite books since she was like 4 months and I figured it's cause of the annoying sounds I'd end up making with each page. In fact she's just fascinated with dogs.

It does help tremendously that our neighbours have a darling dog that loves playing with Tara. Whenever we need to keep her occupied we pack her off next door and she comes back with the cutest look of satisfaction on her face. As you can imagine, Green lake park is just a feast for Tara with the number of dogs you see there at any given point. She'll spot a dog from the corner of her eye, point to it and yell BOW-WOOOOW so loudly that everyone stops in their tracks and turns their head. Then us parents have to do the painful task of running behind their daughter and sheepishly asking the dog owner if said child can pet the dog.

Tara is picky. She wants only the dogs that are (a) clean (b) her height (c) lick her hand and not her face (d) tolerate her whacking their heads. If either option is not succumbed to she turns to the next dog and yells BOW-WOOOOW. We then have to apologize to owner Number One and move on to the next.

We are so thoroughly enjoying Tara these days. She has such a bubbling joie de vivre that it's hard not to get completely immersed into her world and turn into a kid all over again.



PS. Thanks to Arvind for taking these pictures.