His BFF, Mo'i...
For many of the trips I took with my dad, he would first come out to our home near San Diego. Generally he'd stay with us for a few days at the beginning and the end of the trip, to see our local scenery and (especially) to eat at some of San Diego's fine restaurants.
Over the years and visits, he got to know some of our dogs reasonably well. They'd recognize him when he showed up, and he'd get down on the floor and play with them. My dad liked friendly dogs.
One of our dogs, though, was a particular favorite of my dad: Mo'i. If you knew my dad and you know Mo'i, you'd be completely unsurprised by this – as they shared two defining traits.
First, Mo'i and my dad had very similar attitudes toward food. I've mentioned before how planning for the place and time to eat was something my dad would do reliably as we took off on a trip. He did the same thing at home, too. Mo'i is very similar in that regard – the central focus of Mo'i's life is food. He's a bit less particular, perhaps, than my dad was – but the centrality of food in Mo'i's world view is basically exactly like my dad's was. When my dad first saw this, he felt (and expressed, to our amusement) an instant kinship with Mo'i.
Secondly, Mo'i and my dad both enjoyed naps in the sunlight. All you have to do is show Mo'i a patch of sunlight and his eyes will start to close. My dad was pretty much the same way. On one of his first visits to our current home in Jamul, I once found him and Mo'i curled up on our living room floor together, in a patch of sunlight streaming in through a south-facing window. Their faces had quite similar expressions – peaceful, happy, and calm.
At the end of one of our trips – I think the one to the Big Sur – we were driving toward home, through the night-time traffic of Los Angeles. We were both pretty tired, having spent most of the day in my truck, on the road. My dad, characteristically, was plotting what goodies we should pick up at the grocery store before heading “up the hill” to our home. He was hungry, and this was therefore a serious undertaking. Suddenly, with no warning to me, he burst into a sunny smile and started laughing. When I asked why, he said he was thinking of Mo'i's reaction when he walked in the door with grocery bags. He wanted to pick something up, just for Mo'i. We did – we picked up some hamburger. The other dogs got some, too, but Mo'i got the bulk of it. My dad fed it to an extremely appreciative Mo'i, who was clearly transported to some earthly version of field spaniel heaven. My dad at that moment looked nearly as happy as Mo'i...
