I’m not very good at it yet. I’ve been experimenting with exposure and shutter speed and some of the different settings in the camera: Macro, Action, Portrait, and Night Scene.
This photo is overexposed, but can you find the lizard?
He only learned to ride his bike a few weeks ago . . .
The roses growing in front of my house.
Another shot of the roses on my dining table — with too much shadow.
My puppy!
It’s a lazy day here — perfect for practicing with my brand new camera.
Yep.
That’s one of our puppies, April.
Yes, she is wearing a bandage.
I called the puppies into the house this evening so I could brush them. I brushed Amber and reached for April. I felt something sticky on her fur but proceeded to brush the hair around her ears (because it is curly and soft and I love brushing it). I talked baby talk as I worked and said something like, “Now your ears look so perty-perty. Let’s bwush your belly.”
I rolled her over and, to my horror, she had a big chunk of skin missing over her breastbone. I did what any highly-trained medical professional would do in that situation: I screamed bloody murder for my husband.
Brad and they boys ran into the family room and I said, “Look!” as I pressed lightly on April’s sternum. When I did that, the wound opened up and oozed blood and I, again, did what any highly-trained medical professional would do: I nearly fainted.
Seriously folks, I can scrub into surgery and work in critical care units without a moment’s queasiness. But the moment one of my babies is hurt (yes, my puppies are my babies too)? All bets are off. Heather is just like everyone else: Terrified.
I snapped out of it fairly quickly though. I handed April off to Brad and drove straight to Walgreen’s for hydrogen peroxide, bandages, antibiotic ointment, and rolled gauze. I was pretty on top of things but I still called Melonie, the doggie guru, on my way. She talked me down quite expertly.
April is all bandaged up now and she is still running around happily — as if she isn’t missing a big chunk of flesh. We don’t know how she got hurt but, with all the construction we are doing around here, we suspect she got snagged on a nail or something like that.
I am giving her all sorts of special treatment and she may even get to sleep in our bed tonight –her idea of Heaven.
I hate that she got hurt but doesn’t she look adorable in her bandages?
Awww! Don’t we look happy in this picture? Can you tell we love our puppies? We love them so much that, rather than referring to them as “the dogs” or “the puppies,” we refer to them as “the girls.” As in, Brad walks in the door from work and asks, “Where’re the boys?”
“Playing a game in Bump’s room.”
“And where are the girls?”
“They’re sleeping on the couch.”
And half the time, he goes to say hello to the girls first!
We took the girls to Petsmart to be groomed this evening. When we picked them up, they were so soft and smelled so good and had adorable little doggy bandanas tied around their necks! Their perfect puppy cuteness inspired baby talk that would sicken most people. Such as:
Oh, you’re a pretty girl. Yes, you are. Pretty, pretty. And such a good baby. Yes, you’re just a precious baby, that’s what you are. Mommy loves you. Yes, she does! Buh-buh-buh-buh! Buh-buh-buh-buh!
I know some of you are just dying to ridicule me for baby-talking to my dogs. Go ahead. I don’t care. Because they are precious, pretty babies. Yes, they are.
The hole left in our family by the loss of our puppy is too great to bear. We know we can’t replace our puppy but we do want to find another puppy we can love. I told Brad that it just seems so wrong to be looking for another dog only a few days after burying Tinker in the flowerbed in the back yard. He reminded me that we began trying to get pregnant nearly immediately after suffering a miscarriage many years ago. That’s true. But it seems . . . different somehow.
Still, the evening found us visiting two dachsund breeding farms with high hopes of finding a puppy to love. I held two small puppies in my arms and they were soft and adorable but I found myself remembering how Tinker tucked herself into the crook of my arm and gazed at me with her big, brown eyes when I picked her up the first time. Rather than straining to get back into the box with her siblings, she seemed to realize that she had found a new family just as we knew right away that we had found a puppy we could love.
None of the puppies I held tonight did that. They all strained toward the ground or toward their mother and siblings. They were sweet-natured and cuddly, but it was obvious that they lacked even one tenth of Tinker’s personality.
It is a testament to how much we loved Tinkerbell that we are willing to look for a new puppy so soon after her death. While she was alive, she brought us only joy and happiness. We hope to capture that sort of love between canine and human again.
We will keep looking.
I haven’t posted anything of substance for a while because all I wanted to write about was our beloved puppy and how sad I have been since she was killed. I knew that someone who meant well would eventually tell me to stop writing about it and get on with my life. Well, the problem with that is that I need to write about it in order to move on with my life
Several of you have asked what happened. One of the boys left the door from the utility room to the garage open. Tinkerbell loved to sneak into the laundry room where it is warm and quiet and take naps. On the night she was killed, she had been playing with the boys and my friend’s little girl all night. She was exhausted and went into the laundry room to sleep. I am sure she saw the open door and decided to run outside to play with the cat or look for the children. It just so happens that our neighbors across the street, who she loved, pulled up in their driveway. She ran across the street to greet them and was hit by a car before she made it across.
It was a horrible and traumatic event for our family. We loved our dog like she was a member of the family. For her to have been lying in my lap one moment and lying dead on a piece of cardboard in the driveway as we keened in the next moment seems to me to be one of the most unfair and unacceptable events of my life so far.
We buried her in her pink fuzzy blanket. A kind neighbor helped Brad with the grim task of digging the grave. When the neighbor left, the four of us stood clutching each other and sobbing as we stared at the patch of ground and tried desperately to wrap our minds around the fact that we would never again hear the clicking of Tinkerbell’s toenails on the wood floor or watch her slide around as she chased after her rubber ball.
I asked if anyone wanted to say a prayer but the guys were all too choked up. Brad tried to speak but, in the end, could only shake his head. So, I pulled my family to me and prayed:
I’ve been so touched by the outpouring of love from friends and family. I was the recipient of so much kindness from the blogging community and I wish to thank everyone who commented or e-mailed.
We loved Tinkerbell and I am sure I will still write about her, especially in the next few weeks and months. As a tribute to her and to help fill the huge hole in our hearts left by her death, we recently bought not one, but TWO puppies. They will never replace Tinkerbell and we never hope to replace her. But we love them and they love us and I know that Tinkerbell would want the boys to have puppies to love them.
So, in the past week, I have learned that there are few things in life that can’t be made easier when holding an armful of puppies and I have thanked God countless times for placing soft and cuddly puppies on the Earth.
Breath of Heaven is one of my favorite songs. I listen to it year round even though it is really a Christmas song. It’s surprising that I love it so well because Amy Grant is definitely not one of my favorite singers.
The part of the song that hits me right in the most vulnerable and hidden place inside my heart is when she sings, Help me be strong . . . Help me be . . .Help me. It’s timed so beautifully and it always comforts me because it serves as a reminder that I don’t always have to know what to pray for. All I have to ask is, “help me.”
I am notorious for trying to do things all by myself. I ask for no help and rarely accept it when it is offered. It pains me to admit that my tendency to present myself to the world as being bulletproof may be the one major dysfunction that I have not had the courage to tackle head on. It really causes me so much pain. I should do something about it. The problem with acting bulletproof is that everyone believes I really am bulletproof. And the sad reality is that I am just as fragile as anyone else and, in all reality, probably more fragile than most.
I’m grieving for the loss of our poor, sweet, little puppy and, at the same time, trying to be here for my children as they grieve. I am so sad and confused and angry and bewildered and frightened. I am expending so much energy simply to remain upright that I have none left for maintaining the emotional armor that I wear so diligently. Every disappointment, every slight, every sadness is piercing straight to my heart. I feel so naked. I feel so desperate for comfort and love. I need something so badly but I can’t put my finger on what it is, exactly.
Since I don’t know what to pray for, I am simply praying: “Help me.”
Breath of Heaven
I am waiting in a silent prayer
I am frightened by the load I bear
In a world as cold as stone,
Must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now
Be with me now
Do you wonder as you watch my face
If a wiser one one should have had my place
But I offer all I am
For the mercy of your plan
Help me be strong
Help me be
Help me
Breath of heaven
Hold me together
Be forever near me
Breath of heaven
Breath of heaven
Light up my darkness
Pour over me your holiness
For you are holy
Thank you to Sharon for this beautiful drawing which has comforted me and my family very much while mourning the loss of our beloved puppy.
There are various places within which a dog may be buried. We are thinking now of a setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the green lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub of the garden, is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorous bone, or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places, in life or in death. Yet it is a small matter, and it touches sentiment more than anything else.
For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, questing, asking, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps at long and at last. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture land, where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained, and nothing lost — if memory lives. But there is one best place to bury a dog. One place that is best of all.
If you bury him in this spot, the secret of which you must already have, he will come to you when you call — come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they should not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he is yours and he belongs there.
People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper pitched too fine for mere audition, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them then, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth the knowing.
The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.
by Ben Hur Lampman
