"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." Groucho Marx.

As many of you know we lost two of our most loved dogs over the course of this last year, or so. Cindy wrote about my buddy Hobbes in her blog (It's a Mahan Thing) a year ago; "On Saturday, Aug. 4, we had to put our sweet golden retriever out of his misery.  He lived with us his entire life, from March of 2000 until the day he died.  Many people will attest to the fact that you can't go wrong with a Golden for a loving, gentle, loyal family pet.  But Hobbes was exceptional.  He came to us as our children were primed to leave the nest...Jen was actually in college, but had moved back home, and Adam graduated from high school the year we brought that puppy home.  But Hobbes remembered, and loved, them all.  As the kids left home over these last 12 years, college, marriage, Marine Corp, he was never quite as content.  But whenever they came home, his world was complete."

And I posted on Facebook in March of this year, Very serious and terminal bone cancer in the left foreleg and shoulder of our great friend and companion of the past eight years (Lizzie). Even if they amputate the limb there is a 90-95% chance of the disease returning. We brought her home from the vet last night with heavy hearts so we could spend a few last hours with her to say goodbye. Kelli will come home tonight to share an evening with her also then we will return to the veterinary office tomorrow and say our final goodbyes. Lizzie has been a good dog with a very sweet and loving personality. I (we) will miss her when she is gone.

Many of the relationships that we have as part of the human family can be termed Love/Hate/Love. I have never had that kind of relationship with any of the many dogs that have populated my life over the five plus decades I have enjoyed thus far. I think the tally is up to eleven dogs over those years (am I really this old?). The relationship between man and dog, from my perspective, is one of love/love. We love them because they first love us. Charles M. Schulz is quoted as having said, "Happiness is a warm puppy." I agree. I know that when I have been involved in picking out a new puppy to come to my life I am not the one doing the picking out. The puppies I got right out of high school (Duke and Greg a pair of Golden Retriever brothers) chose me. They came to me and did not like it that I was showing an interest in any of their litter mates. Cindy and the kids have chosen all the other puppies that have come to our home and I am certain that the experience was similar.

Following the loss of Hobbes and Lizzie we were thinking that we would not get another dog to be companion and friend to Viva (Border Collie mix) unless she just could not handle being the only dog in the household. She did okay most of the time but would mope and be dejected from time to time as the weeks went by. The biggest concern in my little brain has been that Cindy will be returning to work later this summer and I worry about how Viva will react to being home alone every day once that occurs. We decided about a month ago that we would look for an older (four to six years) dog that needed a home. We figure that they could grow old together and likely approach death at about the same time. Then, if Cindy doesn't change her mind, we will go without. Too many family events that require travel around the country to worry about a dog left behind.

Cindy found a couple dogs that fit the description of what we were looking for and she even went and spent some time with one of the choices. Before she could go get Viva and return (along with me) to see how they would get along that dog had been adopted. That evening as we were out to dinner we discussed what other options we had and decided to contact the veterinary office we have used since we arrived in Montrose in 2006. She did. They pointed us toward a six year old Shepherd/Lab mix that was owned by a couple who had just been admitted to a care facility as they near the end of life. We introduced her to Viva a week ago and they, while hesitant, have become good companions. There are still changes to make in the training of this dog. But, she is very intelligent and responds well to the direction we give. I walked to the back door on a recent evening to hand the telephone to Cindy and as I opened the door I noticed that she was crying and I could not tell why. She wiped her eyes and came to get the telephone explaining as she walked over that the dogs were playing together - something we have not seen in months and the joy on Viva's countenance was very evident. Both are thriving so far and we are very pleased.

Sorry about two more serious posts in a row, Humor will return next week (I think).

Thanks for checking in. More to come. See you soon.

Words, Sentences, Books....

Carl Sagan is quoted as saying, "What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you are inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millenia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

For those of you who do not know I am married to a woman who works as an elementary school librarian. She loves books and she loves children of all ages so the job is a very good fit. She is constantly reading books that she is considering for the school library (or that have been purchased but are unknown to her) before putting them on the shelf for children to read. We also have many, many other books in our home library from a variety of authors and genres. We all learned to enjoy reading a good (or even not so good) book from early in life. I don't know much about the man who I am about to quote here but, I love the quote;

"At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book - that string of confused, alien ciphers--shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader." (Alberto Manguel, "A History of Reading").

I remember that day in first grade when my eyes were finally opened to the lifelong passion of reading.

I have seen in the eyes of my own children when the switch finally clicked closed and the images on those pages began to make sense.

The excitement of putting those characters together into words and again into sentences was mind blowing. Rudyard Kipling is quoted as saying, "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind". And from Mother Teresa, "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." Not so kind words can also be easy to speak and, as much as we hope to still the echoes, they seem also to endure.

There are several times in my life when I have spoken unkindly of another person. No thought given to the comment, simply the first thought into my head escaping through my lips. Once I spoke of a boy whom I had known in school and church for several years. He was a classmate of mine and I knew that he was not in the room at the time. What I had forgotten is that his Mother was teaching the class that day. My friends tried to stop me as I started to speak those words (they knew what was coming) but could not communicate to me quickly enough to forestall the insertion of my large foot into my small-minded mouth. The look of horror on her face is etched into my memory like very few other images. Likewise the feelings of shame and embarrassment at my folly are clear in my mind even today.

I wish I could report to you all that I have not ever fallen prey to the same trap as I did that day in my young life but, alas, there is at least one more incident that occurred during my older teenage years. My Junior year in High School I enjoyed the opportunity to participate in several world history and government classes. Many of my classmates became good friends that year. I remember one day having a discussion with several of those classmates prior to the beginning of class. Someone at the table said something about another of our classmates that, while on some level true, was very unkind. I chimed in with a comment of my own that was deeply hurtful to the individual - who had just sat down at the opposite end of our table. She immediately started crying and ran from the room. Another memory that I will not soon lose. Tempered only by the fact that I was able to find her later that day with a sincere apology. She did not immediately forgive. But eventually she came to me and let me know that she had gotten over it and all was forgotten.

Words, Sentences, Books can all weave intended or unintended magic on us as individuals and on those upon whom we inflict our words and, by extension, thoughts. Whatever we think or say has consequences so maybe Mother Teresa had it right let's focus on kind words so that their echoes can be positively endless.

Thanks for checking in. Hope you enjoyed a more serious topic. More to come soon.