Change your life with some help from your dog!
This house sits on the corner at the end of my street. Years ago, I knew the couple that lived there. She had Great Danes. He had two vintage Rolls Royce cars. The fence hiding the house from view was a stockade one, stained a light beige. The family that lives there now has regular cars, a Collie and (I think) a Boxer. Both dogs have beautiful yard manners, quietly coming up to fence to poke their noses through to sniff the dogs on the other side. I took this photo earlier in … [Read more...]
Today's the day we bring her home to join our human/animal pack. She's been patiently waiting for almost three months for a perfect match. You know as well as I do that perfection doesn't always get to happen. But when it does, it's magic. And wonderful things begin to fall into place. I spent most of yesterday getting ready for her. It was a good drive day: springlike with blue skies, warm enough to slide the sun roof back, let my thoughts float out into the almost balmy air. I headed out … [Read more...]
We don't ever say good-bye when we leave our dogs, we always say, "Guard the house." We've been using this phrase for so long that we never think twice about it. It's as natural and easy as breathing, as consistent and dependable as knowing that the moon follows the sun, night follows day. What we mean when we say this is: "I want you to know that I'm leaving you for a short while. I promise that I'll come back to you. Wait for me. " I introduced this phrase into our family's vocabulary … [Read more...]
My son is shopping for a new car with enough room in the back seat for Jasper, our 160 pound, ten year old Great Dane. The car that he bought four years ago, a 2001 Mercury Sable Sedan, needs to be traded in or given to that junkyard in the sky. Normally, my son's pretty shy about starting conversations with complete strangers. He doesn't seem to have any difficutly at all in calling up car dealerships or just stopping by to chat up salespeople about what he's looking for before asking these … [Read more...]
Years ago, when I was taking poetry writing workshops, rubbing shoulders with poets and writers, other graduate students and wanna-be authors, one very wise woman explained to me that there is a confidence that settles itself like a warm blanket around the shoulders of someone who has just published that first book. She might have left out the part about the "warm blanket" but she was spot on about the confidence. It crackles like electricity, shoots from the soles of your feet to burst like … [Read more...]
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