Image via Wikipedia - their version of fitness (not mine!)

I love advertising, and I truly appreciate cleverly or elegantly done ads. And I try not to let most advertising bother me, unless it’s truly horrendous. But Special K, a cereal long held up as a ‘diet’ solution for morning breakfasts, has gone just a little south of promoting healthy body image for women with its latest advertisement.

A model who embodies everything appalling about the starving waif look – protruding bones, sunken cheeks, smokey eyes – stares disconsolately at a ginormous bowl, bored out of her gourd at the prospect of yet another bowl of dietary punishment. Then, magically, when she opens her cupboard and finds a box of Special K, her world becomes brightly colored, her hair falls in gorgeous wavy rivulets down her back and all becomes right with the world.

Personally, I don’t *hate* Special K cereal, but it wouldn’t be my first choice. If I had to pick a cereal, and if I was eating from a bowl that size – well, it would probably be either Cocoa Puffs (hey, I have secret sins, too!) or Oat Flakes, my childhood favorite, with fresh strawberries. Special K wouldn’t even make my list if I wanted anything approaching healthy nutrition.

I guess what bothers me about the ad, though, is the idea that in the minds of Special K marketers, this waif-like model embodies the picture of a woman who needs to lose or watch her weight. Frankly, the woman in the ad needs to be held down and force fed a decent breakfast of bacon and eggs, with a side of buttered cheese grits and a hot full-fat whole milk latte. Repeatedly. Until her bones no longer protrude through her shape-hugging neutral sweats. Or until she realizes that Special K may just be the road to wreck and ruin.

Talk about sending the wrong message about a healthy body image.

Special K waif tries to stay motivated to lose weight

Father’s Day is not an easy time for me.

My father died in 2007, in March. He couldn’t be interred until the cemetery he and my mother wanted to use was opened for the spring. Thaws, unexpected snowfalls, a crime scene (some of the burial plots on a hill in the cemetery eroded…) – all contributed to delaying his interrment.

My mother decided that Dad would be interred and the graveside services would be on = Father’s Day, 2007. That decision took a day intended to be a family gathering and cast over it a spell that I can’t seem to shake.

It was a brilliant, beautiful, sunny and hot as hell day. I spent most of it indoors. I didn’t want to go to strawberry festivals, have a barbeque, or even visit with people on this day. I want this day to be special. Private. Quiet. I would even prefer to be out of town, doing something that doesn’t involve me celebrating the day we buried my father.

He wasn’t an easy man to live with. It turns out that he’s not an easy man to remember in death, either.

I am a writer. I am an editor. I am the person other people call, several times each day, saying, “Do you have a minute to take a look at something?” Or, “What’s another word for ‘relevant’?” Or, “Can you fix this sentence? I’m stuck.”

That’s me. So glad that four years of J-school and 12 years of newspaper copy-editing and ad agency copy writing aren’t going to waste here in private industry. Really glad. Especially when I make a mistake.

Ai-yee, I have always hated mistakes, especially mistakes in print. We used to post-mortem each issue of the weekly newspapers where I was the editorial designer. Every error, every typo, every missed photo credit – 34 years later, I still remember those meetings and shudder. Now, on the web, mistakes are in pixels instead of points. But the parameters of the destruction are so much wider in web publishing. With the increased expectation that writers will be capable of independent self-editing comes tighter deadlines, bigger audiences. Ai-yee. Today, I hate mistakes even more than I did in print.

So here’s my post-mortem of yesterday’s work:

1. I revised a cover letter I’d written two weeks ago and then .pdf’d it and emailed it to a prospective freelance writing client – complete with not one, but TWO typos.
2. I asked my online editor why a piece I’d written hadn’t made its usual featured spot – trying not to sound righteously angry, but probably failing on that score. Editor: I don’t know, but if you let me know in advance I can fix the placement. I chalk it up to the cost of doing business – some days I won’t get the feature – and I move on. Until I look at my editorial calendar. I’d headlined the piece “Free rabies shot clinic tonight.” When I proofed it before hitting ‘publish’, I realized that the clinic was on Tuesday. I edited the article to correct the date – but never changed the headline, and published it early Monday morning, instead of holding it for the correct day (Tuesday.)
3. I incorrectly listed a yogurt manufacturer’s production state. Corrected it when I found the error – and the content provider’s website never took the edit.

=sigh=  Third time (wrong) is the charm that breaks the curse, right? Three disasters – now I’m done for awhile?

I think I need that intervention for women who keep trying to do too much.

No more multi-tasking, no publishing tonight. I am going to meditate, do a yoga pose, and go to bed.

May 2 was my dad’s birthday. He would have been 83 years old. He died on Friday, March 23, 2007, just six weeks before his 80th birthday.

My dad was a difficult man to live with and a difficult man to love. He was a diamond seller by day, but for all of his life he was first and last a horseman. He was a lifetime member of the Limestone Creek Hunt Club. For most of my pre-teen years, he had a second job as the steward at Vernon Downs, a local harness racing track, where he started every race (before they had electric, autostart gates.) Later, when my dad was in his 70s and before the dementia made it difficult for him to focus, he partnered with his old track cronies to train their horses for them.

I don’t think he ever got his trainer’s license in NY state, but even 15 years ago, you could co-train a horse at a NY track as long as a licensed trainer was also listed on the entry. Dad owned and resold thoroughbred crosses as heavy hunters – big horses designed to carry big men in the cross country over fences sport of foxhunting. But he always kept an interest in and owned a few standardbreds, and he raced a few trotters and pacers (mostly pacers.) I have memories of meeting my dad at the track to watch one of his first co-trained fillies run. My brother Jeff came in from out-of-state and dad teased me that Jeff beat me to the track even though he’d had a 15-hour drive and I was only an hour away.

I used to joke that I grew up on the backstretch – not really true, since I was probably only at the track a dozen times between age 5 and age 10. But I have very clear memories of those barns and the track atmosphere. My first pony was a stable pony bought from a trainer at the track (as was my first goat – but that’s another story.) When I was very young – five or six years old – I was discovered hand-feeding a tough horse named Night Flight, a horse with a reputation as a bad actor in the barn. But he was gently with me, and later when he came to Fayetteville to live in our off-track barn, Night Flight and I became good friends. The stable help found him difficult, but I could groom him and muck his stall without arguments (it might have been the apples I always carried.) At any rate, Night Flight helped me discover that working with animals might just be my secret superpower.

When I was a kid, Kentucky Derby Day was an event in the Steer house. My dad worked at the jewelry store on Saturdays, but he was always home in time to watch the Derby, and then the Preakness, and finally the Belmont Stakes. I used to be able to name all of the Triple Crown winners and all of their jockeys. Watching the Derby (or any race) with my dad was a ritual. We’d check the racing form, watch the horses parade to the paddock, check the jockeys’ and trainers’ records. Was the horse a mudder? Was he carrying extra weight? If the horse was a filly, could she handle the distance? Would a fast horse break away too soon and then fade in the backstretch?

The night before the Derby, everyone had to pick a horse. No betting, of course, but always a spirited discussion of who we picked, and why, and congratulations if our horse was in the money.

And even with him gone, I still watch the Kentucky Derby. For my dad. Maybe with my dad, in one of the only ways we could ever share anything without a fight. When the first notes of “My Old Kentucky Home” rise up to accompany the post parade, I remember derby days from years past, and somehow all the other interactions with my father fade when I remember how he picked his horses, evaluated his jockeys, and watched the race.

This race helped me remember a happier time with you. Happy Birthday, Dad.

Image via Wikipedia

Last week and this weekend I realized that I have a love-hate relationship with my Blackberry Tour smartphone.

I love that I can access the web anywhere that I have a cell phone signal. It means that train rides, cheap hotels without wi-fi and camping trips do not have to take me off the web.

But I hate that my smart phone is NOT, and I do mean NOT, a fully-functional hand-held digital assistant in the same way that several models of Palm personal digital assistants have been. My smart phone is NOT a PDA – and I miss the PDA functions that used to make my life easier.

When I got my first Palm IIIxe PDA in 2001, I discovered that I could write on it with its included stylus – and magically, my stroke-altered scrawl was turned into legible on-screen letters. Even more magic – when I popped the IIIxe into its cradle and hit the Sync button, I sent those scrawled notes directly to my PC – where they became memos, and task lists, databases and Microsoft Word docs. With my little electronic extra brain cells, I only had to write things down one time. Once written, the information could be read on the PDA and synched to my PC(s). From there it could be re-written, edited, emailed, categorized and saved a dozen ways.

I fell in love. I became the Palm subject matter expert at work. I bought second-hand, reconditioned PDAs and loaned them to other techs, converting a couple to PDA users over time. My PDA was always at my side or in my purse. I hadn’t taken notes on paper for nearly a decade – but I’d used and retired a Palm IIIxe, Palm m500, Palm m505, Tungsten E and my first Tungsten E2.

And then my phone died. And my second Tungsten E2 was getting quirky – the touch-screen sometimes blanked on me and the date-time would reset for no reason. I decided it was time to jump into the ‘convergence’ between PDAs and smart phones that tech writers had been singing about for years. My next phone would be a smart phone. Only my phone coverage lives with Verizon Wireless. No iPhone. Palm smart phones were being retired. It was Blackberry, or the new Droids. I decided to go Blackberry, a name that had a long history in multi-tasking smart phones.

And as I said, I mostly like the Tour. But I *hate* that I cannot write directly on my smartphone with a little stylus. I miss Graffitti. I miss scrawling down quick notes, and I miss being able to take notes in a meeting directly in my PDA. I hate tapping out a note with my thumbs on the included keyboard. The keyboard works for contacts. It sucks for writing. The Tour is not alone in sucking as a writing tool. No smart phone can do what my little Palm PDAs were able to do for a decade – allow me to write, in something like handwriting, and record my thoughts as fast as I can think them.

I am back to taking notes in a paper notebook, and then struggling to read my notes and retyping them into outlines, task lists, emails, Word docs and blog posts. Why? Because Palm no longer *makes* PDAs. And my Tungsten E2 is still being a little too  fruity to rely on it any longer. I will have to go to the eBay resellers and see what I can find reconditioned, or maybe I will be lucky enough to score another new-in-box Palm PDA that I can give a good home.

Yeah, I’ve seen an iPad. I want a real keyboard and I want to be able to write on the screen. I own a 9″ netbook which I love – but I don’t want to carry all 2.2 lbs. of my netbook with me at all times – I want the 4-5 oz. I devote to a phone to also be a funcitonal PDA.

If convergence means I can’t write on my phone’s screen, then I want my Palm PDA back. And I want my PDA to be able to make phone calls and surf the web. We have the technology. Why can’t we make our smart phones into true personal digital assistants? Things we can really write on? Please.

It’s been an amazing and crazy three weeks.

I spent Easter in NYC, in a lovely little apartment a block away from the East River and the walking paths that go from the Upper East Side down to the 59th St. Bridge. On the train down to the city, I opened an email from my friend Monica Burns, telling me that Quail Run Rumor Has It RN NA NAJ (Reuben) had died in his agility partner Bruce Burns’ arms on April 1st.

Reu had been just five years old when I’d been diagnosed, and after surgery was ruled out and I was put on chemo forever, I knew I had to re-home him with someone who could manage his activity level and give him the active life I’d trained him to enjoy. I had placed Reu with Bruce and Monica in October, 2004, at a pretty low point in my cancer diagnosis. They loved our crazy Gordon setter like he’d been their forever. He was their boy, and I kept my distance while he got acclimated. I saw him a few months later at the first AKC Rally trials of 2005, and that fall and the next during the Wine Country circuit, we had a small reunion. Each time I saw our boy my heart was proud that he’d adjusted so well. Each time I turned on my work laptop and saw the magnificent portrait of Reu posing in a field next to a pond, my pride in my setter cried a little.

I was supposed to die first. So I did what I needed to do to make sure he had a great home. But me dying first didn’t quite work out – Reu died three weeks before his 11th birthday.

The Monday after Easter, I discovered that my scans were, once again, ‘unremarkable.’ Who knew I’d ever grow up to want to be unremarkable? But there it is – and I’ve got the paperwork to prove it. Better still (I think) is that Dr. Personality put me on six-month checkups.

NYC every six months? I’ve been traveling to NYC for scans and check-ups at least every four months (or three months or two months) for the last five years. NYC is part of my world, so much a part of my life that I always wonder how to answer that NY state income tax question about maintaining a residence in New York City. Now, I get to go to NYC when I want to go – not just to have a CT scan.

Being unremarkable means that I’m going to look at something I think I can do – even if it does over-book me for awhile. I’ve applied to sit as one of the citizen reviewers on the Department of Defense Peer-Reviewed Research Committee for colorectal cancer research. I don’t know if I’ll get in, but I want to try.

Then, today, I found out that a friend from the Colon Club – Mary Catherine Dykhouse, who posted as “justsing” – passed away due to complications of advanced stage IV rectal cancer. She is survived by her husband Joe, her daughters and a son. She was 46 years old. She lived about 2 1/2 years after her diagnosis. MC and I didn’t always agree on approach, but we always respected each other.

What I find myself asking in my out-loud voice is why I’m breaking the rules, coloring outside the lines of expected survival, outliving yet another person who was diagnosed with this disease after my own dx in 2004, but who will not break through his or her own survival curve.

Lobbying in D.C. made me realize how effective I could be at getting people to listen, and act. The DoD peer-reviewed research committee sounds like it’s something I’m supposed to do, if I get the opportunity. Maybe this is why I outlived my wonderful, crazy Gordon setter. Maybe I can make a difference…and speak for MC, for Carolyn, for Janine, for Piotr, for everyone who isn’t alive any longer to speak for themselves.

During my visit, I was videotaped with the other advocates attending C3′s 5th Annual Call on Congress. Yesterday, I found out how powerful words on tape can be.

March.
Colorectal cancer awareness month.
NCAA basketball tournaments.
And health care reform legislation.
These are a few of the mad and shining moments in my life right now.

I’ve been away from the blog because I’ve been *living* my life out loud, and it’s been a heckuva time these last 10 days.

First things first – I am pretty sure that some of the point guards on the SU basketball team could hit a three-point shot from Syracuse TO Salt Lake City. But I’m really glad they’ll actually be IN Salt Lake before they have to try. And I’m really glad Cornell will be playing it’s berth in the Sweet 16 right here at home in central NY, in the Carrier Dome.
But enough of that madness.

I spent last week in DC, lobbying with the Colorectal Cancer Coalition (C3) for representatives to co-sponsor and senators to support with a Senate version Texas Republican Kay Granger’s H.R. 1189 and Oklahoma Democrat Dan Boren’s H.R. 1330. These bills will (respectively) increase access to colorectal cancer screening and treatment, and close loopholes that permit private and group insurers to deny coverage for colonoscopies. We were also asking for an increase in funding for fiscal year 2011 for the Department of Defense’s Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program, which this year began to fund colorectal cancer research. Learning how to lobby, how to make your voice as effective as possible was an intense experience I hope to repeat next year – but more about that in another post.

And then yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives stepped up and passed legislation which, after reconciliation with the Senate bill passed in December, 2009, will make health care reform a reality in the U.S. This is the take on that vote, from the Drug Industry Association Daily Briefing:

House Passes Healthcare Reform Measure By 219-212 Tally.
In what media reports and analyses are casting as a historic development and a major win for President Obama, the House Sunday night passed the Senate-approved healthcare reform measure by 219-212. The AP (3/22) notes that after passing the bill, the House proceeded to approve “key changes” to it, “part of a prearranged agreement to guarantee passage of the historic legislation. The changes passed by a 220-211 vote. That bill now goes to the Senate for final approval, where it only requires a simple majority to pass.”
Most stories are describing the bill in largely favorable terms — and the vote as a triumph of the political system as a whole. The vote, reports USA Today (3/22, Wolf, Fritze), “assured that about 32 million Americans will gain health insurance coverage, and millions more will win protections against losing theirs.” The Los Angeles Times (3/22, Levey, Hook, Silva, Muskal) reports that “House Democratic leaders proved they could hold the majority caucus together,” though “thirty-four Democrats opposed the bill, as did all Republicans.” An AP (3/22, Woodward) story observes, “Rarely does the government, that big, clumsy, poorly regarded oaf, pull off anything short of war that touches all lives with one act, one stroke of a president’s pen. Such a moment has come.”
It was, Bloomberg News (3/22, Litvan, Rowley, Jensen) notes, “the most sweeping US healthcare legislation in four decades,” and “the biggest victory yet for…Obama.”
The Los Angeles Times (3/22, Nicholas) reports, “Rarely does a president bet everything on a single card, but…Obama did it on healthcare,” and “what became clear in the…debate is that Obama is a president with a combative stubbornness, one that was not often visible in his cool, above-the-fray public demeanor.”
In a front-page story, the New York Times (3/22, A1, Bernard) reports, “The uninsured are clearly the biggest beneficiaries of the legislation, which would extend the healthcare safety net for the lowest-income Americans.” Meanwhile, “for people already covered by a large employer — most Americans, in other words — the effect would not be as significant. And yet, just about everyone might benefit from tighter insurance regulations.” The Times adds, “There is no question that the legislation should benefit consumers in various ways.” In a separate front-page story, the New York Times (3/22, A1, Pear, Herszenhorn) notes that “Democrats hailed the vote as historic, comparable to the establishment of Medicare and Social Security and a long overdue step forward in social justice.”
McClatchy (3/22, Doyle) reports that “Pelosi has already made the history books, and now she’s written a new chapter in wielding power.” The vote, says The Hill (3/22, Cusack), “showed…why she is one of the most powerful Speakers in history.” Pelosi “achieved what some thought what was impossible after Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts two months ago.”
McClatchy (3/22, Lightman, Douglas) reports that “within a year, insurers” will “be barred from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions, imposing lifetime limits on coverage and dropping people from coverage when they get sick.” The bill also “provides more help with insurance premiums for lower- and middle-income consumers and expands Medicaid funding to states.” Politico (3/22, O’Connor) reports that it was “a legislative landmark Sunday night that has eluded generations of lawmakers” — one that provides a “climatic finale to a yearlong saga that has taken its toll on the president and his party” while securing “a historic win for Obama while providing his party with some much-needed momentum after a long, grueling slog.” The Washington Times (3/22, Haberkorn) also notes that “Democrats hailed the vote as one of the most significant change[s] in American social policy since the creation of Medicare in 1965 or Social Security in 1935.”

I’ve really been enjoying this heckuva ride, this display of shining moments (what did G.W. Bush Sr. call them? oh yeah, some crazy million points of light!) that we’ve lit up in the sky this March. Let’s keep ‘em coming, America.

March is colorectal cancer awareness month. Leading up to each March I go back and forth in forum conversations with people who want this year to be the year the world experiences some sort of magical CRC awareness miracle. While awareness is growing, there is of course no miracle. There are only faces – mine, yours, someone you met at your kid’s school or your neighbor or a relative.

Friday March 5 is ‘Dress in Blue Day’ across the US, when people dress in blue to show their solidarity with CRC advocates in raising awareness. There are a couple of cool videos of me out on the ‘net, dressed in blue and filmed in early 2009, telling my survivor story to Colon Cancer News. And I’ll wear blue again this Friday. Later this month, I’ll participate in C3′s 2010 Call on Congress, meeting with my senators and representative to discuss bills which provide screening for colon and rectal cancers. It’s the first year since diagnosis that I don’t have either scans or surgeries or recovery at this time, the first year I’ve ever gotten the chance to go. I’m excited and a little nervous and I can’t wait.

But today, I saw a message on Twitter about someone sponsoring a giveaway this week to benefit the Komen foundation and breast cancer advocacy. And me, the person who’s always maintained that advocacy and science don’t care what color awareness ribbon you wear, found myself thinking “By the goddess – you’ve already got October! March is colorectal cancer’s month!”

Before the hate mail starts – I’ve got breasts (both of them.) I do regular self-exams and have had mammograms on schedule (more or less) ever since I turned 40 (skipped them while doing active chemo, because they aren’t reliable then.) My paternal aunt and three of my cousins (her daughters) have all dealt personally with breast cancer. My oldest cousin died of recurrent mBC. Her youngest sister, positive for the BRCA genes, had a prophylactic double mastectomy. I get breast cancer awareness, people – I support it and I’ve even donated my writing services to Komen foundation fund-raising efforts.

But I’ve got a thought – maybe radical, but hear me out.

To truly raise awareness, we need to let the individual cancers assigned to months other than October shine. We need to get the pink-wash out of the center spotlight for 11 of the 12 months of the year, so that we can have a shot at raising awareness for the other cancers that kill people – lung cancer, the #1 killer of both men and women in this country; colon, rectal and anal cancers, which are the #2 cancers that kill both men and women, gynecologic cancers, prostate cancer, lymphoma, pancreatic, esophageal cancers.

Each of these cancers needs their time in the spotlight if we are ever going to successfully raise awareness. But to focus on these other cancers, we need to stop the pink madness, the saturation of pink year-round, the promotions from November to May for May’s country-wide Races for the Cure, and then the promotions from June through October for October’s breast cancer awareness events. Is it too much to ask for the center spotlight in the months that aren’t May or October? Is it too much to ask that the promotions designed to raise breast cancer awareness let some of the other cancers have their chance in the spotlight, their awareness months without fighting for air time and ‘net space or having their colors diluted by pink?

Cancer doesn’t care about the color of your awareness ribbon – but people do. And it’s people who need to be made more aware that colorectal cancers, lung cancer, gyn cancers, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, brain cancer and other cancers are as much or more likely to be fatal and to affect larger populations than BC.

So, with all due respect – stay out of my blue month, okay? I’ve got some awareness to raise for the cancer that will affect over 150,000 new patients and kill more than 50,000 men and women this year.

Bruce runs Ruben (Reu) in Novice standard

I’ve rewritten this post four times. I think it’s just time to publish it.

Last week, I got an email from Monica, subject: Ruben. Monica (and Bruce) are the wonderful couple in western NY with whom I placed Reu, my too-much-dog five year old gordon setter in the fall of 2004. Monica started her email by saying she’d hoped she’d never have to write me this news.

It was also a sentence I never wanted to read. Heck, six years ago I never thought I’d be alive to read it; who worried that I’d be around? Not me. I was more worried that I wouldn’t be around. That was why I re-homed Reu in the first place. In 2004 Reu was an active, hard-charging 85-lb. Gordon who needed a full-time job. On chemo days, I could barely hold onto him. A researcher I work with took him into her home during my first 12 chemo infusions – where her family called him ‘Hurricane Reuben.’

I knew in mid-summer 2004, after Dr. Personality declared me inoperable, that I needed to find a new, working home for my big guy. As much as it tore me apart, I told my dog friends and I put out the word that a five-year-old started Gordon setter was available for rehoming. I contacted the breeder - a novice who didn’t acknowlege my letter or emails or phone messages. I talked with the stud dog’s breeder, long-time friends about an hour away. I knew that Reu would always have a home with them, but since their main focus is conformation and I was the obedience/agility connection, Reu wouldn’t really be challenged in their kennel. They’d be doing the right thing, but it might not be the right thing for my guy.

And then an agility friend introduced me to Bruce and Monica – fellow agility competitors from western New York. Bruce had always wanted a male Gordon but Monica was reluctant to start a male puppy. They came to meet me and Reu at our campsite during the Wine Country Circuit that September – and then, they came back with all three of their Gordon bitches. The dogs got along. Reu took to Bruce like he’d found his next best friend. And he was (to my surprise) immediately gentle with Monica, who has multiple sclerosis (MS) and met him from her electric wheelchair. I could tell before the weekend ended that Monica and Bruce were good people, the right people.

We made an agreement, and two weeks later, Reu went home to western New York with Bruce. I had trained him in Rally and entered him in the AKC’s first Rally trials in Rochester NY on New Year’s Eve/Day 2005. Monica showed him to his Rally Novice (RN) title, making him the first Gordon setter in the country to earn the RN. That trial was our first reunion – and while my crazy puppy was glad to see me, he was also attentive to the sound of Monica’s wheelchair and to Bruce’s voice. The dog who once had been mine now had new bonds, new people, and a new focus in his life. And he was happy and productive. And I knew he was home where he belonged.

That’s the kind of rehoming transition that every trainer and rescuer and breeder hopes to reach when placing a dog…the dog who still hugs you but is looking for his new family. They sent me pictures and portraits and news, as Reu earned first his Novice Preferred title in agility, and then his Novice standard and jumpers titles. I still have the blue glass trophy plate Bruce brought home from the Gordon Setter Club of America national specialty, where Reu finished his NAJ. I know every day, every moment, in every part of my being, that I made the best decision for both Reu and I, and that he’s had for these last five years a far better life than he would have had nursing me through three surgeries and five chemo regimens.

But while I seem to have cheated time and survived longer than anyone in 2004 could have believed, time has moved on for Reu. In another six weeks, he’ll turn 11. And according to Monica, his next birthday is not a guarantee. She was writing to tell me that our boy has a sarcoma on his spleen, and that he’s not, in the estimation of their vet, a surgical candidate. On medication, he is (in her words) ‘acting more like his old self.’ But time will move on and the sarcoma will not stand still, or go away. Our boy doesn’t have very much more time, but the vet assured Monica and Bruce that on medication, he’s not in any pain.

No matter how much we care for our dogs, we cannot make their time – or our own – stand still. They won’t be either crazy puppies or strong adult dogs forever. All we can do is hug them and help them to meet their time without pain or distress. But as I re-read the email, as I have each day, I can’t help but realize that a part of my life, the part where I owned a crazy wonderful special setter, is changing again. And the next email will remind me that time moves on, but survivors leave too many friends behind. 

And there is just never enough time.