Baker's Big Sit

When Chet Baker wants to go up to the tower, he comes up beside me and literally tucks himself under my right arm. I hoist him up and carry him, sometimes under my arm, sometimes thrown over my shoulder, up the two flights of narrow wooden stairs to towertop. Baker always wants to go up to the tower when we go up. And so he spent almost all of Sunday with us in the tower, sitting big.
Like everybody else, he likes to be able to see over the retaining wall (which is at a height exactly calculated to contain adults who've had a few too many glasses of Cabernet). So we set up a stool for him and lift him up to it. He knows to sit perfectly still on this stool, because the slightest tremor from him and it starts tottering, which sends him into a panic. He watches for birds and bunnies and accepts strokes and caresses from anyone passing by. For a Boston terrier, this is pretty close to heaven.
When the wasps got really bad up there, swarming by the dozens around our heads as they will on warm fall days, Shila and I took a nice walk out through the orchard, and Baker came along. We plopped down to talk and Baker busied himself making ever-widening circles through the woods. After about 40 minutes he finally got tired of waiting for us to do something interesting, and found his way back home through some pretty thick brush. I was proud of him. He's no dope.
We climbed back up to the tower to socialize and wait for more bird species to fly by. Baker assumed his position on his stool, but his eyes got heavy and he curled up for a catnap. His hindquarters kept falling off, so he asked to be put on the floor, where he decided that Rondeau Ric's Tilley hat was as close to a dog bed as he was going to find.
Boston terriers seem to be infinitely compressible. At this point, we were stalled at 63 species, and we all felt like curling up on a hat. So we cracked open some beers instead.