If I only wrote about dog love, would you keep reading? I feel like a teenaged girl, only instead of boys it’s those semi-retarded, furry creatures with their tongues hanging out, their fluffy tails bouncing down the sidewalk like the feathers on a majorette’s baton. Everywhere you look there’s another nut-job human living the drama, but down near the earth are those that are happy and innocent—better than most babies, even, because they don’t ever feel the achy, angry longing to differentiate.
I duck into pet stores whenever I can. I stare the tiny spaniels, with their sad faces, and the shih tzus. I can’t decide which I like more, the feisty ones who stand on their back legs, cheering you on to take them home, or the ones that just lie there, buried in shredded paper, their baby faces crushed up against the glass. (When Maud was a little girl, she always wanted the stuffed animal in the store with the crooked ear or the creased arm—the others, I think she thought, didn’t need her massive love.)
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about: people should apologize, genuinely and with full acknowledgment of their wrongdoing, if they’ve behaved in ways that are traumatizing to those that they love (especially their children). Genuine pologies go a long way in the healing process, I think.
Until then, back to getting my Vitamin D from dogs.
Deitch 
How much is this dog