Almost 40 years ago, during an exhausting day, I was taking a break when a man I’d never met came over, put a bottle down in front of me and said, “You look like you could use a beer.” Before the bottle was empty, Robert DiRinaldo and I were no longer strangers. That conversation marked […]
Author: Mitch Lebovic
Hard Choices
Having dogs in your family is a joy—the companionship, the love, the adventures, the comic relief. There are a lot of responsibilities and chores as well. And some annoyances. That’s just part of the deal. Then there are the hard choices. Buster was the first leader of The Great Dog Pack. Today is the anniversary […]
Buster: The First Leader of The Great Dog Pack
Buster came into our lives in the late ’90s—thanks to a routine trip to the food court at White Marsh Mall. After eating, I’d walk to the pet store on the upper level to play with the puppies. That afternoon, I met a German Shepherd puppy—my favorite breed—and he was impossible to ignore. I played […]
Boomer
I bought my first house in 1990—a three bedroom townhouse in suburban Baltimore. I didn’t think I needed a house. It was something people told me I should do—prepare for the future. But I was excited about one thing. I could finally get a dog. Turns out, those people were right. My future came more […]
The Man with the Dog
In 2016, I moved to a small townhouse in Aberdeen to start my post-child-raising life. Roxy and Blitz came with me. We kept to ourselves and really didn’t get to know the neighbors. A couple years after I moved in, I walked out of my front door and there was a man moving in two […]
The Wild Child Returns
Dakota and I walked along the shore of Lake Michigan on a summer afternoon in Door County. Dakota loves the water, so I let her wade in. My father texted. “It’s time to come back for dinner.” I called Dakota to come, but she wasn’t ready to leave. Usually, Dakota wears a harness for exactly […]
Why Start a Blog in 2026?
Starting a blog seems like a very 2005 thing to do. So why am I doing this here and now? Last fall I used my Facebook account to send a message to my wife and her son. Nothing special—just a product I saw that might help the sagging fences in our yards.Less than a minute […]
Dakota
The day we got Alex’s diagnosis was one of the worst in our lives. We sat with her, trying to say the right things, trying to make it feel manageable. We told her we would be with her every step of the way—that this was just a temporary setback. Nothing worked. The only thing that […]
Alex
At 6 a.m., nurses rushed into the hospital room. “We have to go now,” one said as she unlocked the bed and started pushing it toward the door. The other nurse handed me a set of scrubs. “Put these on and meet us in the OR.” They were small. I was not. I grabbed a […]
Why The Alex Lebovic Foundation Exists
One of the hardest things about grief is that time marches on. You want the world to stop because yours just did. But it doesn’t. And it’s both heartbreaking and a little cruel to watch everything continue as if nothing changed—as if it never mattered that Alex was here in the first place. I know […]