Thank you.

Shae Daisy; the puppy with white eyelashes

I’ve had a boatload of people contact me either by text or email and thank me for sharing the Waiting on Mason post. It’s all y’all I should be thanking. Last month the Farnival had almost 25K hits. I’m blown away (and humbled) by the amount of people that care enough about these abandoned mutts to keep tuning in. So, thank you so much. Concerning the amount of tears I shed writing about Dessie’s death, I feel like I owe it to the people that regularly read this blog to write through those terrible moments. It’s ridiculously fun pecking away on my computer about the pleasures of living with a pack. But what kind of animal activist/writer/lover would I be if I didn’t document the hardest times of all?

Hands down, the roughest part of having animals is losing them. That’s not only my opinion, but a consensus among animal lovers I meet everywhere. When I was in Vermont, I had a conversation with a 78-year-old veteran who lost his German shepherd twenty years ago. He claimed the grief was so bad he’ll never have another. “There’s no pain like your dog dying,” he said. This is a man who survived Vietnam. Losing Dessie may feel like losing a limb, but I can’t go as far as that veteran. I can’t imagine a life without animals. If being part of a pack means every few years I have to the feel the amount of grief I do right now, then so be it. The daily rewards of living with animals is worth every painful second.