I should have taken a picture...
I was home today and my yellow lab Sonny was out in the back yard when a little girl, maybe 5 yo, knocked on my front door. She'd seen Sonny and wanted to know if it was OK to play with him. I assumed she was one of my neighbor's grandkids and asked if there was an adult who would be watching her. She said 'yes' so I agreed and she headed for the yard.
I tossed out one of Sonny's big stuffed balls to get them started. The little girl threw it and Sonny retrieved it, over and over.
I went back to my home office which looks over the yard and checked on them periodically. Sonny, who's energetic but no spring chicken, tired after awhile and soon lied down in the grass. The little girl then lied down near to him, rubbing his tummy and ears, playing 'patty cake', and generally just communing with doggie nature.
In just a matter of a few minutes the two of them, this 9 year old lab and a 5 year old girl, couldn't have been any closer than a couple of little kids or litter mates and it was the most adorable thing I think I've ever seen.
Maybe I shouldn't have taken a picture. It never would have captured the moment.
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I'll bet if they played for a while longer they'd end up talking a nap together on the lawn!
My nephew and his wife have a 1 3/4 yr. old boy and a Boxer-Mastiff about the same age. I sent them this photo because I hope the boy and his dog will have a friendship like this-
and their fierce advocate.
I so know what you mean about wishing you'd taken a photo. The little girl that lives next door had a very powerful relationship with the family's Bull Mastiff who was utterly devoted to her from the moment she come home from the hospital after being born. He guarded her every step, let her climb all over him like a fuzzy boulder, pull on his ears, stuff her little fists in his mouth and put up with every single embarrassing indignity she loved to bestow on him. Like the time she dressed him in her granny's old taffeta gown with the giant floppy hat adorned with a riot of plastic flowers, leaves and birds, or the time she broke into mommy's makeup collection and painted his face up like a harlot complete with many layers of various colors of lipstick lavishly bestowed all over his snout, or the time granny gave her a big kit of various colored water soluble finger paints, and she made him her canvas for her rendition of Picasso's version of the Sistine Chapel, etc., etc.
But the most adorable moments were those times they just stood there together with her little arms wrapped twice around his giant wrinkled neck and her face buried into his head and do nothing but share their love and devotion. Just once I captured a photo of them in one of those special but every day poses, and it's one of my all time favorite photos...
TT and her Big Bubba Bear
There's just nothing like the love of a dog and a child.
Sweet! 
