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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
In February of 2025, I became a grandfather for the first time. After losing Alex, I didn’t know if that was something I would ever get to experience. Watching my granddaughter grow this past year has been one of the great joys of my life. And with each passing month, it brought me back — […]