Today, I bake peanut butter cookies as she stares from the other side of the kitchen. Her bloodshot eyes stare with the perfect focus that I thought lost to time through the recognition of ADD and busy lives.

She knows nothing about attention deficit disorder. She only knows the mailman as a threat and each squirrel as a potential chew toy. She knows that I’m a tough customer, which means she has to work for anything I’ll eat.

First, it unfolds with a mid mixing interruption of a whimper, followed by a nudge and a sad hound face directly up at me when I look down. She waits until the cookies are done and checks to see if I’ve lost interest long enough to lose count of cooling cookies.

Then, when I go to eat one, she’ll turn on the water works and cry like she’s about to be taken back to the shelter. Other times, the slobber will be pooling on the floor. She keeps this going because she knows sometimes I’ll give up if she works me down.

Whenever she’s given up hope and walks over to her bed in the corner, I check to see if she’s paying attention. When she really gives up, I’ll give her a cookie.

Not because I think I’m being kind. It’s because I’m sucker for a lost cause.