Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
I took my dogs for a walk. It was sunny. High 80s. The blossoming trees made Crestwood smell like heaven.
The first person I met was an old man, sitting in his yard. He was beneath a massive oak. He ate from a hospital tray, sipped tea from a straw. He wore a Gilligan hat. His nurse was seated with him.
I was walking past his house and he spoke to me because everyone talks to you when you have dogs. It is a universal truth, unrefuted by science.
The old dog was found walking on the highway. She had no name. No home. Nobody.
The guy who found her was a guy we’ll call Peter. I call him this because this is his name.
We sped through Amish country on our way to meet our friend Kris at a restaurant called “Funck’s.” My wife, Jamie, was convinced the name of this restaurant was an unfortunate typo.
I used to write about her all the time. She was just so easy to write about.
From the first moment I met Thelma Lou, when she was an itty-bitty puppy, I knew I had found a literary muse. Then, she bit my ear with her puppy teeth. Crimson blood poured down my cheek. I held the puppy in the air and announced, “This is the one.”
My granddaddy said you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat a dog. Someone who treats a dog badly, is a bad person. A person who treats a dog with regard and deference is a good egg.
Right now, my wife is holding our blind coonhound, Marigold. She holds our rescue adoptee like a baby. Not like a dog.
Dogs know stuff. Yes, I know they’re just animals. I know their brains are only about the size of tangerines. But I’m telling you.
I used to volunteer at an animal shelter. I loved it. My favorite place in the shelter was called the “Introduction Room.” This was the room where people went to meet the dogs that were up for adoption.
She was walking her hound. It was a young beagle. Loose skin. Smooshy face. Uncoordinated feet the size of Lodge skillets. I was in Forsyth Park, in the heart of Savannah. It was overcast and gray. There were various soccer teams on the field, doing drills. And I was mesmerized by the animal.
My truck cab was filled with three barking dogs and one idiot. The dogs were in the backseat. The idiot was behind the wheel.
“Sit down!” the idiot kept saying.
Dennis had a LOT of personality. He was fearless, as it turned out. It wasn’t long before he was charging into new environments, bumping around until he learned the layout of each room. Dennis loved to play. Also, he learned to walk, which was something he could barely do before.
My blind coonhound sits before our fireplace. Staring into nothingness. Caught in the darkness of her own visionless world. “Marigold,” I call to her.
We did not choose Otis. We let our oldest dog, Thelma Lou pick him out. She was just a puppy. We felt strongly that Thelma deserved to choose her own brother since, after all, she would be the one stuck sniffing his butt for the next 12 years.
Yavapai County, Arizona, is a lot of dirt, rocks, and heat. I spent a few weeks outside Prescott once. The heat index was 140. It was so hot the Prescott Daily Courier reported that local chickens were laying omelettes.
They say blind dogs shouldn’t run. Namely because you can’t run when you’re a blind dog. You might run into stuff. Too many dangers. It’s scary.
My dogs sleep all day. It’s just what they do. Except when they’re busy chewing up my 48th pair of reading glasses. They sleep, sleep, sleep. And amazingly, after a full day of sleeping, they don’t feel guilty about it. Not even a little.
“Dear Sean,” the letter began, “there’s a dog in my neighborhood who was lost and followed me home.
There’s such a pain in me now. I’m surprised by how saddened I am. He won over my heart, stole it and then took a piece of it with him and gave the rest back to me.
They say never buy a dog from a pet store, especially a pet store in a mall. They come from puppy mills, and you can’t really trust them. They are wrong.
Projecting someone’s moral compass by using black people as a debate tool by using them as a measuring stick simply as a debate tactic is racist.