This is Kelsey, my golden retriever and constant companion… She at the end of her road and I’ve been caring for her. I thank all my friends and my vet for the wonderful support they have given her and me. Thank you Bukko for your kind words.
I’ll be back soon.
Good luck Kitty. I know how it feels.
Thanks very much Queenbee… hope your caregiving is going as well as possible… Kitty
I’ll pray for the collapse of globalism…
Seeing Kelsey’s big eyes put me in mind of a National Geographic story I read about an experiment in Russia that’s been going on for more than 50 years, where they’re trying to train foxes to be friendly to humans. It started in secrecy under Kruschev — secrecy because the notion that behaviour could be affected by genetics instead of socialist idealism was anathema to communist doctrine, so let’s muzzle the scientists. What the Russians breeders have been doing is picking the kits (the word for a fox puppy) who have the least fear of humans in each litter, and breeding them with other less-fearful foxes. The idea is to recreate the process whereby humans domesticated dogs. It was an interesting story to me because it philosophized a lot on what it means to be domesticated, and how there are biological characteristics that are only found in animals that humans like, but not wild ones. (Such as coats with multiple spotty colours, which would be a death sentence for a lot of wild species because it wrecks their ability to camouflage or blend in with the dark.)
Why does that remind me of Kelsey? Seeing those eyes makes me think of how human-like dogs are. We have shaped them in our image, for 20,000 years, more than 4,000 generations of dogs. They are a lot like us, because we are the gods who have created them, litter by litter. Another reasons why we owe them good treatment. You create it, you best take care of it.
The vet came this morning and put Kelsey to sleep.
It was peaceful and she is in the ground now.
I owe her more than I can ever repay for sharing her happiness, trust and love with me.
She was noble beyond measure… what a blessing to have had her as my friend…