Category: pets

brown boxer dog and white lab

Baxter’s Golden Ticket

Baxter Brown was a boxer dog. I didn’t know his name when he arrived on my porch one cold March evening about five years ago, but I had seen him before. He wore an ugly orange collar with the owner’s name and number roughly engraved on a gold plate. I called the owner. “Aw, just beat him with a stick. He’ll come home,” the owner said. “Someone needs to be beaten with a stick,” I said. “But it is not the dog.” I hung up and invited the dog inside, where he belonged. He was shivering and terribly thin, so

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The Dance: Why the Pain of Losing a Pet Is Worth It

“Looking back on the memory of the dance we shared…” Garth Brooks’ much-loved song “The Dance” reminds us that the best things in life sometimes lead to painful endings. The song is about a person who realizes what he would have had to miss to avoid the pain often associated with the end of a relationship. Today, the song was on my mind for other reasons. This morning, my s.o. Alan’s beloved Australian Shepherd/Border Collie cross, Topper, who’d worked his way into my heart to a degree I never imagined possible, crossed the rainbow bridge. He was 14, give or

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