Death before doglessness!

Or so I hope. I'm from a long line of people who have shared their homes with all kinds of mutts and purebreds and have loved them from the back of the soul, and take it from us, a dogless life is scarcely worth living. Since elementary school I've been without a dog of my own for just one discombobulating month.

I spent most of the day inside with the new pup, scanning old family photos under his watchful eye. The flip side of the photo below lists my mother's name [she's the tall girl] and the dog's. [He was Pride, my great-aunt's collie. That's Pridey in the small photo above.] The kid sitting in the front apparently didn't merit recognition:


Fallen timber [firewood!] is a hallmark of our family snapshots. I could do a comprehensive photographic history of several generations of us at the cabin and never use a photo that didn't have somebody standing on, sitting on, or leaning against a fallen tree. With a dog.

My wonderful great-aunt is in the photo below, on the right. The dog was another one of hers. He's in a ton of photos.


All this is by way of introducing a newspaper article by Helen Elliott on the subject of doglessness. As she says, "A clean house and doing as you please are, frankly, overrated." Hat tip to Nag on the Lake, who sums up my feelings as well as anything: "I pity the dogless."