Ravi the dog, a valued member of this household since late in the Cheney Shogunate, engages the world nose-first, and so when yesterday an old college chum—it would be a bit much to describe her as a “girlfriend,” but we had a history—visited on her way to a wedding a couple of hundred miles south of here, the family dog buried his face in her crotch as she entered the vestibule. She deadpanned: “Chip off the old block?”

cordially,