Please join me, and the hundreds of others participating in Czar's Promise Dog Walk, to raise funds to prevent and fight cancer in both people and dogs. Jim and I have participated in several fund raising walks to prevent and treat cancer in the past, but this one will be especially meaningful. I joined this important effort many months ago as a sponsor, but then, well, it became a bit more personal. As most of you know, Willie died on April 15th of pulmonary adenocarcinoma. He was only twelve and a half years old, and just weeks before he died he was working sheep, playing tug with Maggie and running like a race horse on long walks in the woods. We moved heaven and earth to try to save him, but we couldn't. Enough is enough--this is a battle we just have to win. We owe it to Read More
Archives for 2019
Why Do We Love Dogs So Much? So, So Much?
I shouldn't have been surprised at the depth of my grief when Willie died. After all, I'm the one who wrote about his uncle that "I imagine his death as if someone took the oxygen out of the air and I was supposed to live without it". Every week I post comments from people who have had to put dogs down, and their pain and suffering is so acute it hurts my heart every time I read them. And yet, the tsunami of grief that overwhelmed me after Willie died was so intense that I barely made it through the first few days. I knew it would be awful. Just not that awful. Now that I am no longer in danger of drowning, I can't stop wondering why we love our dogs so much that their deaths are almost unbearable. I think it's an important psychological and sociological question that hasn't had enough Read More
Marine Mammal Therapy
Jim and I left last week on a trip, long planned, to play for a few days in Chicago with friends. Who knew it would be such good therapy, in part because good friend and dynamite animal trainer Laura Monaco Torelli arranged for us to get a behind the scenes tour at the Shedd Aquarium. Laura worked at the Shedd for years with Ken Rameriz before she left to open up her own animal training business, and asked her friend and marine mammal trainer Jessica Whiton to give us a tour. Jessica generously devoted much of a morning to us, and we couldn't be more grateful. We got to play with Beluga whales. It's the first time I felt happy since Willie died, and you didn't have to be there to see why. I am of the opinion that Beluga whales are not real animals. They've been created by some Read More
Color
I am stunned by, and everlastingly grateful for, the response to Willie's death. Someday I will be able to thank you adequately. Someday, just not yet today. Today this is what I can do: Post photos of colorful things. My brain is working on another blog, about us and dogs and grief and love. Soon. Here is Bloodroot, which is spreading all over the hill behind our house, thanks to ants, who eat an organ called an elaisome on the seeds, and then toss the seeds in the ant trash heap. It's white flowers lighten up an otherwise drab hillside, and it's spreading like crazy. Scilla siberica also immigrates itself all over our gardens. But it's impossible to have too much, so I keep transplanting the little bulbs to new places. I adore it almost as much as does a species of a small, Read More
Goodbye Willie
Willie July 3, 2006 - April 15, 2019 That'll do, Willie. That'll do. I can not write more right now. Not now. I can't even find the perfect photo to include. Not now. But I will have lots to say, when the miasma of this pain has cleared. So, so much to say about life and death and dogs and the biological miracle that is our relationship with them. And about Willie. Our Silly Billy Willie Boy. We are bereft, that's all I can say now. Here is what I sent friends yesterday morning, on Monday the 15th of April, 2019. I'm including it here, because so many of you feel like friends, even though we've never met. We wanted to let you know that we are putting Willie down tonight. His cancer has defied all expectations, and in spite of chemotherapy and a gazillion other efforts, has Read More
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- Next Page »