Again, I apologize because commenting on cards without the reading context is something I find absurdly difficult. I'm hoping it will make more sense to me as I get a few more under my belt.
First, I love Jewel-ry's comment about the yellow brick road. Funny! And I totally see it too. It's a charming image and gives me a starting place to talk about the young couple. I like to see them frolicing here on the Yellow Brick Road, because so often the Ten of Pentacles shows an older couple with children, fully established. I get to wonder, in this card, if they will make it so far. They are still in their courtship phase. And he's a shepherd, isn't he? How many material possessions does he have? Few, I would think. So these pentacles are less about money than they are about the land. The bounty of the earth. How will their idyllic innocence fare now that they've arrived in the big city? Frankly, I worry about them.
But all that is secondary to the soldier and his dog. The look between them is pure love, and I treasure that suggestion, that not all love is romantic, between a courting man and his courted maid. There are so many kinds of love we each experience in this life, and the devotion to a loyal non-human companion is so sweet to see here. A full life, an "end of the yellow brick road" life, has so much more to it than a two-person romance. We make so many connections, take on so many responsibilities.
The image that touches me more than anything else in this card is the patina of age covering and beginning to obscure the soldier's right foot in the bottom corner of the card. His left foot, stepping forward, is shiny and solid and clear to our perceptions. His right foot, still in the past, is fading, becoming obscured, lost to us. The past is always fading from our senses, we can do nothing but step into the future one foot at a time.