When I was younger, I used to ride an assortment of horses. There were fancy-shmancy, purebred ones and the not so fancy, grade horses. Occasionally, people would ask me, of all of them, which ones were my favorites (other than my own). My answer was almost never the youngest, the fanciest, or the one with the most advanced training or perfect conformation, it was the horse that simply had a heart of gold. Two in particular come to mind - Breeze and Agamar. Breeze was a happy little Heinz 57, grade pinto and Agamar was an older Polish Arab who feigned grumpiness regularly, neither were considered "beautiful" or built to perform well in my riding discipline, but both of them had incredible heart that made them priceless. I mention them because I was thinking recently of Carol, a dog whose best attribute, in my opinion, is her heart. But how do you capture that on film or when you're quickly walking by her kennel? That's when I thought of Breeze and Aggie, because when I looked at them, it was always their kind eyes that struck me. But Carol's tend to get buried in her big brindle patches. However, if you take a moment to really look, she's got the eyes that lead to her fabulous heart, which makes her worth her weight in gold......
