Dedication

 This blog is dedicated to...

Montag, 1973-1987, my first dog.  He never took a long road trip with me, but his spirit was with me on every trip I took.  What a magnificent companion he was.

This photo was taken by an AP photographer near the White House in February 1979 on the day that two feet of snow fell, and it appeared around the world

Click here to read a piece I wrote about Montag the day he was put down.

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Kessie, 1987-1999.  Three weeks after Montag was put down, I responded to a small ad in the Washington Post announcing "Four 12-week-old German shepherd puppies for sale" by a German breeder of shepherds. I arrived " by about noon. There were three females and one male, Karlos.  There had been eight in the liter, four males and four females. Karlos was passed up becasue his ears were not popping up straight like the other males, and his testicles were not dropping. Fifteen minutes after I arrived, a young couple from Virginia, Al and Judy Phillips, and their two kids, 13-year-old Shane and 11-year-old Mindy, showed up, hoping to get the only male puppy left. Since I had gone out there to get the only male, Al and Judy decided to wait until I made my choice. Looking for every excuse to avoid making another long commitment, I didn’t make my decision until five. As soon as I adopted Karlos, I rename him Sonntag, Sunday in German for the day on which he was born. Immediately, the Phillips adopted Kessie. I asked them how they made their mind up so fast. They told me that she had been the one female most engaging with Sonntag the whole five hours.  So, we made a commitment to keep the two dogs together as much as we could, and we did.  Several times a month for the next two years I drove out 11-year-old to the Phillips home and watched those two pups romp around as puppies do.  Then, on July 31, 1989, I received a call. Al, Judy and Mindy had been killed in a plane crash the night before on their way back from Atlantic City.  Since I was the only one who knew Kessie (Shane was in Germany), I immediately drove out to their home and the police let me take Kessie, until Shane returned him from Germany, where he was attending school. Shane had to leave his school in Germany and kept Kessie until he finished high school two years later.  I would often visit him and take Kessie with me from time to time on my backpacking trips with Sonntag. Then, when he announced that he was going to have to give Kessie away as he went off to college, I immediately adopted her.  She was with us for eight years.  What a delight she was, she was my sweetheart.  She took several trips with me to Canada to ski at Mont Tremblant, but she too was with me on all my road trips. Just writing these words makes me miss her as if he left me just yesterday.  She had to be put down in 1999 after a deep inner ear infection ravished her balance system. After I scattered Sonntag's and Kessie's ashes over the tundra in the North Slope, in 2001 I kept some. and scattered them over Al, Judy and Mindy's grave in Colorado.  In the dust on the gravestone I added, "and their dogs, Kessie and Sonntag."

 

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Addi, 2010-2022. On July 7 this year, my sister Kathleen wrote me that she had to put down her beloved 12-year-old rescued dog, Addi. "Her little angel," she wrote.  It is not my place to write words about Addi, but I am sure the intensity of the love Kathleen felt for that sweet dog would be at least as great as mine.  And the extra joy she must have felt that she was able to give Addi a second chance at life when she rescued her.

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Pippa and Eli.  

In August, as Donner and my ex-wife, Connie, and I dined at Donner's favorite restaurant in DC, we were approached (seized upon, is the better choice of words), by a young woman named Anna from Nashville. While I have witnessed many dog lovers dote over Donner, Anna outdid all of them.  But then she explained, and I understood. Her story about her German shepherd named Pippa is much like Donner's: abused, broken, and about to be killed at the shelter. She adopted Pippa two years ago. Below is a picture of Pippa with Anna's first rescue GSD, Eli, who died last year. "He was an amazing companion to me," Anna wrote, to which she added, "dogs are the best part of life."  (You can say that again, Anna.) Although Pippa is still very much here, both she and Eli deserve to be on this dedication page as rescued dogs who were given second chances, and I can only imagine how lucky both of them were to end up with Anna, if how she doted over a stranger's dog at a restaurant in Washington is any indication of the love and attention they got. Just look at those happy dogs!