Australian Shepards are known for having eyes of different colors, a blue one often called the "ghost eye."

Right between the eyes one blue, one brown it is the softest.

But lately those eyes have lost focus. And in the black of night a warm wind blowing from the South, he snapped. Both his eyes turned red in the porch light.

His curled lip exposing menacing teeth to me the same ones that cut my wife's lip, nicked my daughter's brow showed to me there was now a different master one calling to him from beyond this patch of lawn in the North.

So later, as I draw my face toward his, toward those eyes toward the soft spot between them where I will comb his soft fur with my bristly beard, his eyes focus on mine.

He knows as I know we all take a chance on love.

Yet we dive in and feel the terror - and the softness.