FEBRUARY 24

This process has been so mighty intense. I have pulled in so many people along the way, maybe too many. Some nights when my mailbox is empty I imagine they are all talking to one another about how thin I have spread myself and how confused I am.
But I am not confused. After a brief flirtation with some terriers, I spun around into spaniels and the vision of the therapy work began to emerge more clearly.
I studied the English Cocker and the Field spaniel and met 2 friends there. But the cocker became so elusive, so hard to find and just meet. I’m sure I would love one.
Fidgteing over the size of the collie, I scaled down and went to check out the sheltie. It seems temperaments have improved and I was more impressed with them I thought I would be. And there I found another friend and a line who type I like very much.
Running in to LR at the breed ring and chatting, looking down at the big calm girl beside her…the idea bloomed. To walk into these corridors, not with the funny little cocker—although that has its charms and its strength—but with the dignified and steady collie, I would feel protected, I would feel ennobled and in that ennobling there is a split seed of generosity.
If she has an enormous heart and patience, I can hook up. We can go together.

And the picture is always about that ruff and the puffing of the cheeks as she takes in smells and her wide back at finger level. The pace is steady, the pace is slow enough to make our way all the way down the hall.

What hall I do not know yet. DR talked to me about the need at OHSU and at the hospice down the street. The children. The Mad. The Sorrowful.