Instructions on Life from a rescue named Maisie
I am up on the meadow with Maisie, just at the top of the hill, right where the path starts winding in a graceful curve to gradually make its way back down. The sun is shining and it is unseasonably warm, in the upper 30s, but the wind is gusting, blowing hard and fast, and …
Continue reading "In Memory of My First Canine Teacher"
Maisie and I are out on the trail on a blindingly bright and bitterly cold Saturday afternoon. There is fresh snow on the ground and the sky is a perfect, pale Iowa blue, with not even a hint of a cloud. We wander off the trail and walk through our community orchard to a snow-blanketed …
I am cozied up to my husband on our sofa in front of the wood stove and we are both attached to our respective iPads. (Mine has a pink cover, his has a black and white skull-themed cover. There you go.) I’ve grown weary of the state of the world I’m encountering in the New …
Maisie and I are going back to school. We’ve been slacking off a bit these past few months, what with my rekindled love of running and her learning that yes, she can have fun with other dogs at the dog park. All of that running around and playing and we got a little lazy practicing …
It’s that time of year and they are everywhere: dogs wearing tacky Christmas sweaters and plaid flannel shirts; dogs dressed as chefs and posed in front of flour-dusted wooden cutting boards, their dog-shaped gingerbread cookies right there in front of them on the floor (how are they not eating them all??); dogs opening their Christmas …
Maisie and I are going for a run together. If this statement conjures up a Madison Avenue image of dog-and-owner-running-together — Maisie trotting happily beside me on a lovely wooded trail while I bound along like a gazelle, my pony tail swish-swish-swishing behind me in time to our footsteps, my outfit perfectly coordinated, my cheeks sporting …
Continue reading "In Which Maisie Shares her Joy of Running"
“Seventeen, Maise Maise, seventeen!” I yell to the back seat where Maisie is — or more accurately, was — sleeping quietly. We have just crossed the state line from Indiana into Michigan, thereby bringing her to her 17th state. She has been with us for nearly nine months and we have been keeping a tally …
It is a cloudless, wild-blue-yonder kind of day and the sunlight reflecting off the fresh snow is blindingly bright. But the dog park is empty, save for Maisie and me, and with a windchill of -5°, I guess I can understand why. January has arrived even though it is only mid-November. Even thought the first …
Maisie is having a particularly bad hair day. She is in desperate need of a haircut, something to which I hadn’t given much thought, mostly because I am thoroughly charmed by her shaggy, disheveled ears. Most mornings, she looks a bit like a washed-up starlet, lazily lifting her head without actually moving the rest of …
The day I met Maisie, she was alone in her kennel at the shelter, even though she had a roommate and partner-in-crime named Jerry. But the day I met her, Jerry was being neutered, his adoption pending. I never did get to meet Jerry and sometimes, if I think about it too much, it breaks …
