The Love Affair

Our golden retriever, Cali, is having a passionate love affair with an old red truck. I know how that sounds, but hear me out.

When Cali was just a baking-potato- sized puppy, we introduced her to riding in the truck—“in” the truck, I should clarify, not bouncing around in the back bed like a common country dog. Back then, we owned a big green Ford Expedition, and we’d fold down the rear seats and load up our dogs like cargo. We’d roll down the windows and let them stick their heads out, which meant our back windows stayed perpetually coated in dog saliva and drool. Those were the good times.

But as a puppy, Cali was much too small to reach the windows, so while our other golden retriever, Zot, had his head hanging out of the vehicle, enjoying the breezy ride, little Cali found her own solution. She’d position herself right between my husband and me on the front console— sort of like the sphinx. I think she loved the feel of the air conditioning blowing on her furry little face, but mostly she just wanted to be wedged between us. For those formative months, she rode that console like she was riding a motorcycle, looking out the front windshield as if she were helping with the navigation. We logged thousands of miles with her perched in the center, and it became her spot.

When Zot grew old and passed away, we figured Cali would assume his position behind the driver’s seat with her head stuck out the window like a regular dog, but we were wrong. By then, fully grown, she continued to claim the center console as her throne, refusing to budge from that vantage point.

Eventually, our old Expedition grew old and tired, too. The odometer had died years earlier, but we suspected it had well over 350,000 miles on it, and we had lost confidence in its reliability. When my Uncle Lamar Lanier died in June last year, we asked my cousin, Stuart, about Lamar’s truck—a 2003 Ford. We felt that Lamar’s truck, with only 148,000 miles on it, could serve as an adequate work truck for us.

We both knew we had to replace the Expedition with something Cali would find agreeable—a vehicle that checked all her boxes of approval. That meant the center console had to be wide enough for her to sprawl comfortably, allowing her to be half in the back and half in the front. Lamar’s truck had a wide soft console that folded down.

The only drawback, really, was the color. We’re Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets here in the Nagle house, and Lamar’s truck was Georgia Bulldog red. We decided to buy it from my cousin, and we drove it home.

Cali was a little reluctant at first but took to Uncle Lamar’s red Ford soon after we brought it home. Since then, she’s ridden shotgun with us for hundreds of miles. We’ve made a dozen or so trips to Home Depot and the dump, and she’s been our faithful copilot for every single mile.

Dogs love to ride around and see what’s happening, just like people do. Cali proves this every time I grab my keys—she barks a happy bark for two full minutes straight, she spins and leaps, then jumps into the truck with an indescribable enthusiasm. Moreover, she smiles. Yes, dogs actually smile, and those of us who love them know exactly what that looks like. continued from page

Sometimes when we’re cruising down the road in Uncle Lamar’s old truck, Cali gently rests her furry chin on my shoulder, as if to say, “Thank you, Amber, for driving me around.” She does this to my husband too, and it melts our hearts every time.

And Cali doesn’t really enjoy being outside with us because buzzing insects freak her out a bit, but if I open the truck doors, she’ll sit on that center console for an hour, perfectly content to watch me cut grass, weed a flowerbed or sweep off the porch. The truck console is her safe zone— her happy place.

Uncle Lamar’s red truck may have hurt my Yellow Jacket pride initially, but watching Cali claim her spot and smile her doggy smile every time we head out together? Well, that makes it worth every mile we’ve traveled and all the miles yet to come.

So yes, our golden retriever is having an affair with an old red truck, and while I’m genuinely happy that she’s found true love, I’m a little saddened that she seems to love the truck and its console more than she loves us. I wonder what Uncle Lamar would think of all this.