The Slice: There’s no measuring a dog’s companionship

Quite a few readers responded to last week’s request for snapshots of small children and big dogs.

Thanks to all. Great kids. Great dogs.

I chose to print a picture that Spokane’s Diane Stone took Thursday morning. It shows her granddaughter Arianna and the little girl’s canine companion, Vincent. “They are the best of pals,” said Stone.

I know I said I would give special consideration to photos showing a child and a dog playing in the snow. But with Vincent, it sort of seems like the snow is implied.

Just wondering: If you read at bedtime but don’t stay awake long after getting settled in, how long does it take you to finish a book?

Back east: Timothy Finneran was reading an online Associated Press story about the lottery winners when he saw Post Falls described as “a suburb of Spokane, Wash.”

That made him wonder.

“How many of our friends from North Idaho would either be repulsed or elated by this description,” he wrote.

That would depend on a couple of factors. How do they feel about Spokane? And what do they think about a place being designated a suburb?

Opinions about Spokane vary, of course. But in considering the matter of being labeled a suburb, follow-up questions come to mind.

Could TV’s “The Wonder Years” have been set in Post Falls?

Can you imagine Post Falls as the setting for movies directed by the late John Hughes?

Do you cling to that tired image of suburbs as bastions of stultifying sameness or do you suspect that people everywhere experience a similar spectrum of hopes and fears?

Does anyone in a city with as many green lawns and two-car garages as Spokane have any business affecting an urban snobbishness and looking down on suburbs?

You make the call.

Today’s Slice question: How is “meal planning” defined in your family?