Cinco De Mayo

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TessaTessa – Beloved now and forever.

Saying Goodbye to Lola

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Occasionally, I have the great privilege of placing a dog with someone who seems to have been custom crafted for just that single, unique, particular dog.  Among dog people, we sometimes refer to that once in a lifetime dog as our ‘heart dog‘. I don’t really know of a better way to describe it – this is the dog who occupies a special place inside of our hearts. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that we don’t love all of our dogs, and it’s not even about loving that one dog more than we love the other ones (no matter how many other ones there might be).  It’s something different – something ineffable. After a while, we you’ve seen or known those two beings together, they become so enmeshed that their names almost start to run together (CharlotteHammer, comes to mind, and for me I hope it’s CarolTessa).

In this case, it was MaggieLola, or since we had more than one Lola at the time, it was usually Maggie’sLola. That wasn’t the most accurate way of putting it, perhaps – I think maybe calling her Lola’s Maggie might have made more sense to most of the people who knew them. Technically speaking, Maggie and I ‘co owned’ Lola together (formal name, Bullmarket Chiquita Lolita), but there was never any question of who Lola belonged to (and certainly not in Lola’s mind there wasn’t). On the occasions when Lola came for a visit, she behaved something like Royalty in Exile – she knew she was better than this, and she knew that soon would come the day when she was returned to her rightful Kingdom, where her loyal subject (Maggie), was waiting to pay her homage (which she was).

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A Certain Kind of Dog

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When I think of Sailor, one word comes to mind – “Barking”. She was the dog who disproved my theory that “Frenchies are sensible barkers” – a theory I published on my much read, but lamentably rarely updated “French Bulldog FAQ”. If you ended up with a barking Frenchie after having read the FAQ, my condolences, but until Sailor, all of my other dogs had been sensible about barking. Not Sailor, though – for her, barking was a recreational sport, a diversionary tactic and a life long proclivity. Sailor was to barking what Tessa was to snuggling, namely: really, really good at it.

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Sailor Girl

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Bullmarket Roch the Boat
My Sailor Girl – Anchored in the harbor of rest.
25 Feb 1999 – 06 April 2012

 

All of My Beautiful Dogs Are Dying
– Vicki Hearne

. . . Without the beautiful dogs
No one dares to attend to desire;

The sky retreats, will intend nothing,
It is a ceiling to rebuke the gaze,
Mock the poetry of knowledge.

My death is my last acquiescence;
Theirs is the sky’s renunciation,
Proof that the world is a scattered shame

Littering the heavens. The new dogs
Start to arise, but the sky must go
Deeply dark before the stars appear.

Support Hershey’s Law – Help End BSL in Ontario

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Vicki Hearne once wrote that the Pit Bull “wars” were really about class warfare. I believe that to be more true today than it ever was.

Look at Peta, and their idiotic statements about the ‘types’ of people who want to adopt or own Pit Bulls. Look at the politicians who can’t seem to mention “Pit Bulls” without also saying “inner city” in the same sentence. Look at the people who animal control target, when it comes to randomly seizing dogs – the poor, the elderly, the disenfranchised. No one is driving up to Forest Hill and randomly snatching dogs out of yards because they ‘look like one of THOSE dogs’.

Politicians have gotten away with this for so long, because they really and truly believe that ‘those dogs’ are only owned by ‘those people’ – ie; poor people who are usually ethnic and who don’t vote.

If you want to teach them otherwise, please write to your MPP and tell them you support Bill 16, and come out to the Rally at Queens Park on February 23rd. I’ll be there with a handful of my ‘maybe sorta Pit Bulls’. Will you come, too?

Learn more here:

http://supporthersheysbill.com/