Are they really so affectionate, or are they also a little shrewd in licking the hand that feeds them?
I dislike to be pessimistic.
But when my dogs come bounding to meet me for a jolly morning greeting they do seem expectant and hungry rather than affectionate.

At other hours of the day they plead with loving eyes and wagging tails for a walk or a seat in the carriage or permission to follow the wagon.
But I will not analyze their motives.

They fill the house and grounds with life and frolic, and a farm would be incomplete if they were missing.

Hamerton, in speaking of the one dog, the special pet and dear companion of one's youth, observes that "the comparative shortness of the lives of dogs is the only imperfection in the relation between them and us.

If they had lived to three-score and ten, man and dog might have traveled through life together, but, as it is, we must either have a succession of affections, or else, when the first is buried in its early grave, live in a chill condition of dog-less-ness." I thank him for that expressive compound word.