Leonard looked on from inside the house, where he had felt it would be better to wait a moment before going outside to Paulina.  He found the sight of this large cantankerous woman and her doted-on pet, silhouetted together against the afternoon sun, oddly touching.

As she fussed over Kasha, he recalled the old saying about dogs resembling their owners.  He wondered if whoever originated that saying had ever seen a pair quite like this.

He reconsidered (as he knew he was prone to doing—endlessly).  The only possible resemblance was that Paulina's eyes, when they weren't forced into a squint by cantankerousness or obesity, had a surprisingly liquid quality.

His mind returned to the problem at hand.  There didn't seem to be any good way to broach the issue to her.  But then, inventing ways around situations like this was one of the things he was paid to do.  

He stepped out the door with a contrived jauntiness.  “So it's a dog's life around here, eh?”