About the same time we stopped going to the dog park, our neighbors decided to add a canine companion to their family. As Diana tells it, they wanted a docile dog who was easy to manage. They went to the shelter and picked one who they thought was the perfect fit—Brady. Brady weighed about 70 […]
On a September afternoon in 2011, Roxy, Blitz, Kal-El and I went to the dog park. It was their favorite place to go. When we arrived, I opened the car door and they sprinted to the gate. Once inside, Roxy usually went off and explored. Blitz found his friends to play and Kal-El followed him […]
When Dakota was a puppy, I got a message from Kathy Salvucci. “Dakota looks like she is going down in pastern. If she is on puppy food, get her off and put her on adult food.” I didn’t understand her concern. “The pastern is between the knee and foot on the front leg. It should […]
On a warm spring day in 2010, Alex shouted excitedly. “Dad, come see this!” She was looking over her mother’s shoulder at a Facebook post. A woman out for a morning walk found an abandoned puppy in a box by the side of the road. She couldn’t keep him and was trying to find him […]
On a December night in Baltimore, I was photographing the holiday fireworks at the Inner Harbor when I heard a call from down the pier. “Is that Blitz?” Two women I didn’t recognize walked toward me, with cameras in hand. They turned out to be fellow photographers who I connected with on Facebook. Blitz was […]
Roxy wasn’t supposed to be my dog. She was for my wife and kids. In fact, I was told to keep my distance. Roxy joined the family while I was on a business trip to Orlando in 2006. She was a bundle of Golden Retriever energy from day one. She loved her new family and […]
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 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 […]