Category: The dogs

The redemption of March 22

St. Patrick’s Day 2026

Today marks the beginning of my 74th trip around the sun. This past year has been as eventful as ever. This will be my second birthday shared with Mary, who herself is embarking on her (mumble, mumble)th season.

I have had a mixed relationship with March 22 in recent years. I have always been tickled to share my birthday with William “James T. Kirk” Shatner, sportscaster Bob Costas, and Werner “Colonel Klink” Klemperer, not to mention (looks it up) Reese Witherspoon, J.J. Watt, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, James Patterson, M. Emmet Walsh, Marcel Marceau and Chico Marx.

But then five years ago the date was ruined, forever I thought, by the death of Willow The Best Dog There Is™ on my 68th birthday. I knew my birthday would never be the same, now that it was a marker of my best canine friend’s departure more than my own arrival.

Sure enough, the next three March 22s were somber days, especially after the even deeper loss of my beloved Red, who had been my partner for close to 26 years. Nothing, it seemed, would restore any sense of happiness to my natal anniversary.

Then a sweet woman offered me a hug one fateful Sunday morning. A week or so later, during coffee after church, I happened to mention to a friend that my birthday is March 22. A voice popped up behind me, “Why, my birthday is March 22!” It was the sweet woman who had hugged me. We talked about what a fun coincidence that was, and it was another thing that led to other things that soon caused our fellow parishioners to start calling us “you two lovebirds.”

And so the reputation of March 22 is redeemed in my eyes. That one year is sealed as my worst birthday ever — God forbid there ever be a worse one — but I’ve discovered it is still possible to have a happy birthday after all, especially since now it’s a celebration of the woman who hugged me back to life.

Cries in the dark

When the dogs went out at 1 a.m. Thursday, a canine — a coyote, I think — was barking and howling nearby. It sounded as close as the field just north of the house, so I stood on the deck while Summer and Dejah did their business down below.

I hope it was a coyote. The barks sounded like a domesticated dog, and if so the howls could have been a cry for help. But the howls sounded like a wild animal, and the moon bright in the clear sky is growing full, and so I assumed it was a coyote howling at the moon for whatever reason they do so.

Given that assumption, the sound was beautiful, another reason for settling in the country where wild animals still have a little room to be wild. I don’t know what was really happening out there in the dark, any more than a city dweller knows why a siren is howling in the night, but I find that I prefer the animal howl to the machine’s howl.

Treated like a dog

Sometimes you’ll hear someone say, “He treats her like a dog,” usually when someone is especially mean and nasty to someone he supposedly cares for.

Let me tell you how I treat my dogs.

Dejah is prone to allergies, especially food allergies, so she is on a special diet of “hydrolyzed protein,” which means it’s a specially formulated hypoallergenic dog food to improve digestibility.

Summer is prone to bladder stones, so she is on a special urinary tract diet designed to dissolve the stones. If the stones don’t go away soon, surgery is the only other option. But she seems to be better since I switched to a new brand of treats. More on that in a minute.

I would rather not divulge how much I spend on dog food and veterinary bills, but I believe it’s worth it to keep my girls healthy.

Dejah likes to climb into the other easy chair while I’m watching TV, and Summer usually sleeps in my bed. Most of the time she curls up in a corner of the bed near my feet, but sometimes she gets there before I do and sprawls across the end of the bed — on those nights I sleep horizontally, or kind of diagonally actually.

We live on a three-acre lot, but Red and I built a fence to create a backyard area where they can play without fear of any predator-type critters in the woods, and so they don’t wander away from home.

At least once a night, and often twice, Dejah will whine to go out. She is 12 years old, which is elderly for a golden retriever, and her bladder is not as strong as it used to be. And so I get out of bed and let her outside for a few minutes at 1 or 3 a.m.

When Summer was a puppy, it was a challenge to get her to come back into the house, so I started to bribe her with treats — Beggin’ Strips or Blue Health Bars. These past few months after the bladder stones were not going away, I switched her a few weeks ago to a special veterinary-formula treat. Dejah still gets the cheap stuff, and Summer seems to love her new crunchy treats.

I’m not saying this to complain or to lift myself up as anyone special. This is just the kind of thing that dog owners do for their furry family members.

I’m just saying that being treated like a dog can be living like royalty. I’d like to suggest we come up with a different metaphor to describe the jerk in the first paragraph.