Written by Tim Mayor; Read by Ben Taylor
(“Dedicated to all the children here tonight.”)

[audio]

Would you look at the number of stars out tonight,
I can’t think when I’ve ever seen starlight so bright.
You can see why they say it’s romantic, all right;
All those men with Flamenco guitars.
Can you find what your ancestors pictured up there?
Can you pick out the archer, the dog and the bear?
Do you know that the starlight is crowning your hair
with the wealth of the last of the Czars?

But someday we’ll grow older, as most people do,
We’ll look up at the sky and the stars and they’re no longer new.
So we’ll have to ask somebody little, like you,
Tell me, what do you make of the stars?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Listen to and download songs from Ben Taylor from the Daytrotter Sessions

The next morning, there was a line. There were two cats in the bed and one beside it waiting for someone to get out of it. Here’s Olive getting a sun bath one morning recently when we had a cold snap.

This end of the house faces east, so mornings are a very popular time in the bed because of the sun coming in. The cats pile up on a couple of the dog crates to catch the sun. This is Olive and Diego.

And my gorgeous Goose! His real name is Gustafus, thus a cat named Goose. He walked out of the woods one Friday afternoon as a small, skinny kitten. He was talking away. Kind of a “hey, you! I would like to come in and have something to eat.” With that, Lily and LeRoy went running across the front yard at full speed. Goose turned and ran back into the woods. The dogs stopped at the fence line. Goose didn’t realize there was a fence there to stop them. It took me about a half hour to coax Goose out of the woods enough that I could SNATCH him! I eventually got him.

In other news…

The puppy is starting to get his adult teeth! Yeah for that!!! He STILL needs a name. His owners certainly don’t seem to be missing him much yet… sigh. Did I mention that he sleeps in my bed? Took him a couple days to realize THAT was the place to be on a cold night.

So that’s the skinny on my week so far. Loving the simple things. Here’s wishing you simple things, too.

Funny how we just have to mess with them when they sleep…

(photographer unknown)

A guy is driving around the back woods of Montana and he sees a sign in front of a old style house: “Talking Dog For Sale.”

He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.

The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.

“You talk?” he asks.

“Yep,” the Lab replies.

After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says “So, what’s your story?”

The Lab looks up and says, “Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.”

“I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running. But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I’m just retired.”

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.

“Ten dollars,” the guy says.

“Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?”

“Because he’s a liar. He never did any of that shit.”

Have you seen this commercial for the Air Vick shoe from Nike? They showed it on Jimmy Kimmel this past week. How perfect!

Here’s the excerpt from Jimmy Kimmel.

Our 14 year old dog, Abbey, died last month. The day after she died, my 4 year old daughter Meredith was crying and talking about how much she missed Abbey.. She asked if we could write a letter to God so that when Abbey got to heaven, God would recognize her. I told her that I thought we could so she dictated these words:

Dear God,
Will you please take care of my dog? She died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I am happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick. I hope you will play with her. She likes to play with balls and to swim.

I am sending a picture of her so when you see her You will know that she is my dog. I really miss her.

Love, Meredith

We put the letter in an envelope with a picture of Abbey and Meredith and addressed it to God/Heaven. We put our return address on it. Then Meredith pasted several stamps on the front of the envelope because she said it would take lots of stamps to get the letter all the way to heaven. That afternoon she dropped it into the letter box at the post office.

A few days later, she asked if God had gotten the letter yet. I told her that I thought He had.

Yesterday, there was a package wrapped in gold paper on our front porch addressed, ‘To Meredith’ in an unfamiliar hand. Meredith opened it. Inside was a book by Mr. Rogers called, ‘When a Pet Dies. Taped to the inside front cover was the letter we had written to God in its opened envelope. On the opposite page was the picture of Abbey & Meredith and this note:

Dear Meredith,
Abbey arrived safely in heaven. Having the picture was a big help. I recognized Abbey right away. Abbey isn’t sick anymore. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart. Abbey loved being your dog. Since we don’t need our bodies in heaven, I don’t have any pockets to keep your picture in, so I am sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have something to remember Abbey by..

Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you write it and sending it to me. What a wonderful mother you have. I picked her especially for you. I send my blessings every day and remember that I love you very much. By the way, I’m easy to find, I am wherever there is love.

Love,
God

 

Though the rescue of dogs and cats and their journey to a new life is the hard work of dedicated people from all over the world — yes, rescues even cross the oceans and seas of our planet earth to reach their forever homes — it is not without a tale worthy of telling. Incredibly pets speak volumes without saying a single word. It’s all body language and facial expressions. Perhaps that is why I love silent movies so much — they remind me of pet-speak.

A couple months ago, I shared with you the hilarious story of one “leg” on the journey three spaniels took aboard the canine rescue railroad as told by the driver, Robin Olson. She is typically a cat person, so her foray into the world of dogs had me laughing out loud to the point of tears. Even on the third reading of her story. How well I recognize the “death fart” and “the stench of pepperoni dog barf.” Imagine how it must have seemed to a cat person stuck inside the confines of a small car driving down the road.

Recently, another author, Debbie Eades, commented on a post I wrote about the underground railroad for cats and dogs. For seven years, Debbie and her husband have been driving rescues from kill shelters to rescue groups and forever homes in the Cincinnati area. In that time, Debbie has accumulated hundreds of tales and photos of the journey for these rescued animals.

From these tales has come a book: “Every Rescued Dog Has a Tale: Stories from the Dog Rescue Railroad.” In her words: »

Profits from the sale of the book go directly to help rural animal shelters and dog rescues around the country so that more dogs will have a happy ending. It is her hope that more people will be inspired to become a volunteer and save more lives. There is a great amount of satisfaction received from helping these animals in need.

Here are a few of the dogs Debbie and her husband have journeyed with over the years. You can click on any of the photos to read a caption about the dog(s).

For more information about Debbie’s book and to read an excerpt, you can go to her website everyrescueddog.homestead.com

At any moment, there are thousands of pets needing transport… and you can help. To start, go to yahoo groups: pet transport. There are many groups. Find one that interests you, whether it is by breed, by region or by state.

Help these guys (and gals) get home.

• half of all American pet owners consider their pets as much a part of the family as any other person in the household
• 36 percent said their pet is part of the family but not a full member
• 29 percent of dog owners and 26 percent of cat owners celebrate pet birthdays
• 37 percent of dog owners and 33 percent of cat owners include their pet’s photo or name in a holiday card
• 50% of dog owners and 39% of cat owners have taken their pet on vacation
• Taken to work — 21% for the dogs and 14% for the cats
• Nearly half of all dog owners and 40 percent of cat owners admit giving their pets human food at least sometimes
• single people (66 percent of single women versus 46 percent of married women) and women were more likely to call a pet a full member of the family
• almost half (49 percent) of respondents have given at least one of their current pets a human-like name, including 51 percent of dog owners and 50 percent of cat owners
• more cat owners (36%) allow their furry friends to sleep in the same bed with them than dog owners (29%)

*The AP-Petside.com poll was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media from May 28-June 1, 2009. It is based on landline and cellular telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,110 pet owners. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Damn, Tuesday! Trash day! Not that that is so terrible, but it just adds something else to the morning chores.

Within a couple minutes, I hear a dog’s tail start to wag. It is tapping the floor. This triggers a dog yawn. Then the flapping of ears as another dog shakes it’s head. Sebastian (aka Seb), my Siamese cat, appears from nowhere and starts screaming at my head and walking all over my body. The rest of the dogs get up and start circling the bed. The sound of all those toe nails clicking on the wooden floor seems so deafening at that hour. It’s like fingers on a chalkboard or what I imagine water torture to be like. I may as well just get up. It’s 7 am. Time for the marathon to start.

I stagger down the hall to turn on the stereo (I need the rhythm of some music to spur me onward), open the back door to let a few of the dogs out (I have to do this 5-6 times before I eventually get them all or most out), grab a cup of coffee and head back down the hall.

I have been known to take my cup of coffee and go back to bed. My thinking is I’ll give the caffeine some time to start working. Sometimes an hour passes in what seems like 5 minutes because I have just plain passed out. So I mutter something to the fact that “I must have needed more sleep” before getting on with the marathon.

Next stop is the emergency pee pad. I set it up a couple years back for my senior dog who has arthritis really bad. It just became too much for her to walk down the hall, across the back porch, down the steps or the ramp and into the yard to do her stuff. So I experimented with various plastic sheets that I cover with newspapers. I had a brain fart at Lowe’s one day — rubber pool liner!! So I have a length of rubber pool liner 7′ long and 3 1/5′ wide… covered with newspaper.

Brilliant idea… it works like a charm and is quite durable.

I put it in the hallway between my bedroom and what used to be my office. Lacey’s accomplishment for the day was to maneuver best she could from the bedroom to the office in the morning with a stop in the middle for a potty break. Then in the evening, she would manuever herself back to the bedroom with another potty break in the middle.

As her arthritis has increased, she has opted to no longer walk. At all. The lack of exercise has turned her into a 90-something pound dog (about 10-15 pounds over her regular weight from several years ago). So… she drags herself onto a large piece of canvas and barks at me to drag her to the pee pad and then to the living room, where I now office.

Further, she has embraced this new mobility and requires that I take her outside a couple times a day where again she does her business. Thank goodness for the ramp. Thank goodness for canvas.

Because Lacy has made known the purpose of the pee pad, I often find that it has been used by other dogs during the night. After I have my cup of coffee in hand, I have to clean the pee pad so Lacy can soil the pee pad. And I will likely have to clean it once more before the morning marathon ends because I have a couple small dogs that hold their business until they come back in from outside. Drives me nuts… but I roll on.

Okay, the next leg of the marathon — keeping in mind that it is Tuesday — is to collect trash from all the appropriate places throughout the house and move it to the front porch. Then on to litter boxes — there are seven of them. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to have to walk very far when they need to potty (I say with great sarcasm). It’s the path of least resistance.

Next, feed the two cats — Otis and Layla — that are out in the cattery. They are foreclosure cats left behind when their family moved. They are also Feline Leukemia positive which is highly contagious to other cats, but not to me or to dogs. When diagnosed in February, 2008, the vet wanted to put them both “down” (gosh I hate that word). The news was a complete surprise and hit me pretty hard. For the next hour and a half, a parade of people at the clinic tried to talk me into euthanasia. Layla just stared at me with her big green eyes that seemed to reflect a whole lot of trust. What am I supposed to tell her? “I’m sorry, it’s just inconvenient for you to live.”

I couldn’t do it. I spent another 15 minutes talking the doctor into giving me some drugs to knock the infection out of Otis (who looked like he might not even make it through the weekend), paid my $265 bill and took Otis and Layla home. Over the next 10 days, I built them a cattery — their own fenced in yard, a one-room house with wrap porch, a sleeping platform and a climbing tower with several levels they could lay on. They are just outside the dining room window, so they can see and hear us all the time. They are surrounded by dogs, so no cats can access them. While the dogs were a bit close for them at first, they are fine with it now.

While I am outside, I’ll feed LeRoy… my front yard dog. And I’ll water the sorriest excuse for a garden I have ever seen. And I planted it. Three days after I planted my tomato plants and seeded my vegetables, we got 14 inches of rain that topped the garden by several inches. You have to wonder where some of my seeds ended up. I think it you follow the creek down the road and on through the woods, there is a spot with a whole lot of grass and some sprouting vegetables courtesy of me. There are probably some really happy critters, too.

I also moved the trash out to the street.

Take a gulp of coffee. Feed Frankie and Drew Haden (cats) in their room.

Five down, 38 to go. Damn, someone had an accident in the hallway. Everything stops for clean up.

Time to make the rounds through the house and collect food bowls. Annie eats in the master bath, Claire has taken over the top of the desk in the old office. Meha and Paketo’s bowls are there, too. The rest of the cat bowls will be in the kitchen. Dog bowls… they are generally scattered throughout the house: Taylor eats in the hall bathroom; Maya eats in the office; Millie and Emily eat in the bedroom; Sassy and Gigi eat in the kitchen; Lacey eats in the living room; Sweet, Kelsey, Bosco and Gracie eat in their kennel carriers. Anyone else who has decided to eat inside eats en masse in the living room and dining room (it’s essentially one big room).

Afterwards, much of the “en masse” follows me outside where they get their regular dosage of food. Because they think they are smarter than me by double dipping (eating inside AND out), they get very small portions inside.

We are in the home stretch of the marathon now. I can almost see the rest stop. I pick up the outside dog bowls and place them back in the rack I built for them, turn the water on to top off the level in the pond, bring all the dogs outside for “recess” and then I clean up the yard. I pick up poop from the backyard twice a day and compost it. After 10-12 months in the compost pile (it is actually twice composted), I add the compost to flower beds.

Sometimes I water some plants or the grass I am trying to grow. But today, I don’t want to. It’s just so hot.

I come in and remove ALL my clothes — everything is soaked through with sweat, put on a new set of clothes and head for breakfast. My breakfast. When it is this hot, a couple bowls of cold cereal with really cold milk taste so good.

With that done, I have reached my first rest stop of the day. In about six hours, I will do much of it again.

As Betty used to say, “It’s a great life if you don’t weaken.” To which I say to myself, “Roll on.”