Intimate Bonds
Intimate Bonds belongs to the following groups:
All Pets Great and Small and Mans Best Friend's (Dogs only)The photo is in the art section.
I have taken many photos of my dogs, Molly and Mikey. Mikey is ten years old and Molly had her 3rd birthday party on September 20th. As Mikey was growing older, his mood began to change. He was sleeping more, eating less and showing more signs of depression. I usually have two dogs or more, but this was a transitional period moving to another house. His first love was Annie, a tri-color English Setter with whom he had a litter of puppies. I want to share the photos of Annie and Mikey and Willard who passed away shortly after Annie arrived. I felt that Mikey needed another dog to love and play with which I believe has extended his life span and brought him great joy. Since, he was abused as a puppy before I rescued him, he needed a playmate that was lovable, not aggressive and who would bring life and vitality back into his life. Caroline Knapp in her book Pack of Two, The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs has written a wonderful book of self-discovery after she adopted Lucille from her local pound. She says,”Before you get a dog, you can’t imagine what living with one might be like;afterward you can’t imagine living an other way. I can’t contemplate how still my home would be, and how much laughter there’d be, and how much less tenderness I would witness without
living with my dogs. Caroline wrote, “I once heard a woman who’d lost her dog say that she felt as though a color was suddenly missing from her world;the dog had introduced to her field of vision some previously unavailable hue and without the dog, that color was gone. If we are open to what they have to give us, dogs can introduce us to several colors, with names like wildness, nurturance, trust and joy. People forget how important touch is to live a balanced and nourished life. Studies show that the elderly live longer when they have a dog as a companion and many nursing homes across the country have allowed their residents to own a dog. When that is not possible, dogs visit and bring joy and comfort to a lonely senior. This picture says it all. Molly often sleeps with her feet on Mikey or finds a way to crawl into the space between Charlie and me with her head on the pillow. She hopes to receive one of her belly rubs as she positions herself with my hand on her soft belly. She is not subtle about her needs, but without her loving spirit, a color would be missing from our world that fuels us with
her generous heart.
drjones
i just wrote a really long message here but the page crashed when i clicked “add comment”! frustrating! i won’t re-write it, but i will say that this is gorgeous Julie…and that my dogs bring colour to my life too! :)
lacewren
Have you studied canis/homo co-evolution? Seems dogs have saved our hairless-ape asses, a few times. I currently stay at a house-of-2-dogs.The alpha/female snarls her greeting, to which I reply with a generous petting, while the old/boy licks my entire head clean (this accounts for the bald spots, I joke). Palpable glory.