Today's Daily Parker

The whole family went to Meramec State Park, near Sullivan, Mo., over the weekend. It was Parker's first long car trip with us. Never before in my life have I cared as much about what goes into and out of another living creature; the car trip only intensified this feeling.

Observe Parker as he was for perhaps 98% of the trip:

Now observe him as he appeared twice on the way up and twice on the way down:

That's not guilt, believe it or not. That's a seriously unhappy puppy preparing to demonstrate the folly of (a) feeding him before a car trip and (b) giving him a Bonine tablet on top of it.

He then went on to surprise us not once but five times during the trip. The moral of that story is, of course, don't give him any privacy indoors.

We all had a lot of fun, though, especially Parker. More on that tomorrow.