Chapter 8
That night, I dreamed I was flying over an unfamiliar, exotic landscape with Teddy Roosevelt beside me, his ears blown back and tongue out. That dog loved a good adventure.
His greatest real-life achievement to date had been summiting one of the lower mountaintops in the national forest. I kept the framed photo of him, with an expression much the same as the one in my dream, on the magnetic board in my bedroom. Paws atop a boulder, the majesty of the mountain range and blue sky as his backdrop, my black Lab literally stood on top of the world.
As I lay there in bed peeking at his picture across the room, the real Teddy had muscled his way inside, hitting the door with a meaty shoulder and activating the loose latch. I rubbed his soft ears as he snuffled the bedclothes.
“I wis
