Toby the Puppy joined our family in early September 2014. He quite literally just showed up. It was love at first sight — for him and for us.

I am happy to report something that you might already suspect. It is that after more than four years of life with this 12-pound ball of energy, my wife and I are still laughing every single day as our puppy continues to entertain us.

It doesn’t take much to make us giggle.

We watch him walk ahead of us, his rear end swiveling with each quick-step he takes; we laugh. We ask him a question in complete sentences; he cocks his head as if to understand every word we’ve just uttered and then he looks at each of us for a response. We ask him if he wants to go for a ride in the car or take a walk; he grabs his favorite ball from wherever he placed it last and wants to take it with him.

Every walk we take with Toby is as if he’s never done it before. He whirls in circles waiting for his leash.

We leave him at home for, oh, 10 minutes. We return and he acts as if we’ve gone for 10 days. He jumps into our arms, licking our faces.

Toby the Puppy is a font of laughter.

I am quite certain that we have giggled or guffawed every day since the moment we laid eyes on him while he sat on our back patio. He looked at us as if to say, “Is this my new home?”

Gladly, it was.