Since losing Button to the inevitable misfortune of old age, we have begun devoting more time to Riley.  It's not that he was ever neglected, far from it, but our immediate and constant attention was necessarily focused on Button's well-being, as a result of her growing elderly handicaps.

She was with us for an awfully long time, as our companion in just about everything we did.  Her presence in our lives pre-dated the arrival, sixteen years ago, of our grandchild, by well over three years.

Now that Button is gone, there is a huge vacuum where her presence once dominated everyday events of our lives.  It is a vacuum nothing can quite fill, but it will, given enough time, we're assured, become less painful, less acute, less enveloping. 

And now that we're focusing on Riley far more than we were able to, when Button was around and about, it seems to us that he is very quiet, very innocuous, quite undemanding.  Not that Button didn't share some of those traits.  I suppose that everything just seems rather quietly empty sometimes when we look around expecting to see Button and she just is no longer there.

He always seemed like a solemn, pensive little fellow.  And now he seems that way even more, although in all likelihood, that is likely a result of our over-active imagination, attributing to him emotions that reflect our own.  He doesn't seem to miss Button, there was no time we could see that he looked for her, felt puzzled at her absence, required reassurance.

Because of the large age gap when they first met and Button's total disinterest in the new little puppy we had brought into the household, there never seemed to have developed an emotional link; she never mentored him.  He had always attempted to ingratiate himself with her at first, but to no avail, and he finally simply regarded her as she did him; a presence in the house, nothing personal.

Riley loves his comforts.  Our presence is integral to that range of comforts.  He's a little glutton, or would be, if we allowed him to eat whatever he wanted.  He enjoys being physically comfortable, and the height of that physical comfort is attained when either one of us sits down somewhere to read, and he's able to access a spot tight next to us, where he can snooze.

Above all, little Riley is a sun dog, a sun worshipper, and never more content than when he can bask in the sun.  Rainy, overcast days are morose days for little Riley.