As we go through life, challenges pop up like targets in a shooting gallery. Most times they’re small like running out of milk and others are large like a major car repair. The largest challenges we face the one we call grief. In some people, it makes them stronger and wiser. In others it leads to a breakdown of their life. Some people turn to the bottle to combat grief (which usually makes it far worse) and some turn to either themselves or God and are able to cope with the loss.

The challenge that I’m facing is writing about all of the deaths that I’ve experienced including one of my own (wherein my heart stopped during a medical test) and putting what I learned into thoughts and words that make sense and hopefully help others.…

On the Monday after the Orlando mass shooting, 12 specially trained golden retrievers arrived in Florida to do what they do best: provide comfort.

The dogs are part of the K-9 Comfort Dog Team, a program run by the Lutheran Church Charities that now has 130 dogs in 23 states across the country.

Each dog was picked as a puppy because of its calm demeanor, and each one was trained to be gentle, comforting, and affectionate.

Read the rest….…

Writing about grief is a rewarding and difficult process. The most important part of this project is you! As you can imagine the cost of publishing a book can and does cost is signifigant amount of money and every little bit helps. I have set up an entire series of rewards for everyone who helps me with publishing costs. ALL donations will get a membership on this site – you can read Living With Them as I write it with all the revisions and extra notes I write! Other rewards include physical copies or the ebook version of the book when it’s finished.…

Mister Kitty on his very first night with me.

Living With Them is a book about so much more than the death of a beloved pet and what happened. It’s a book about what I’ve learned during my life from facing adversity, grief and the joy of life that came from the depths of dispair. It is about the strengthening of faith that comes from grief, about how God shows us the joy of creation, relationships and living. Living With Them is a celebration of what happens when you throw of the yoke of grief and grab the reins of life.…

As June rolls into July and August, we remember our fallen friend and companion of 22 years, Queen Theodora Maxine Lourdes Sphincter De’Catville. Also known as Ted Bird, the subject of the book “Living With Them”, Ted loved to lay on the deck in the oppression heat of the summertime, basking in the sun for hours and hours.

Cats are reputed to be originally from the desert and revel in the heat. Nearly no cats I’ve known like the  heat that much. But Ted did and we miss her.…

This is an old but still funny bit about giving a pill to a cat. The modern easy way is to put the pill in a syringe, pull in some water to disolve the pill and shoot the liquid into the cat’s mouth. So easy my wife could do it.

How to give a cat a pill … and a dog, too

While writing the various chapters of “Living With Them”, I’ve come to realize something both wonderful and spooky. Writing the book, once I got ‘done’ (a book is never done, I’ve discovered) with the first chapters about animal spirits, biblical references to animals, scientific studies about human-pet relationships, I started to write about all of the pets I’ve known and loved.

Which is when I discovered something really, really odd. They all come back, especially the cats. They don’t dash outside and get lost and then come back, they die and then come back.

By some odd twist of fate or divine intervention, every single special cat has come back into my life and I have the photographs to prove it.…

When Little Tedbird (Tedbird 4) came to live with us, she was barely 5 weeks old, an orphan that had been rescued by a nice lady. From the very first night, Little Tedbird has slept with me. She starts the night off by snoozing in the office chair next to the bed but a 1AM every night, it’s cave huggie time!

Snuggling with a kitten is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world. Kittens are sweet and cuddly and soft. I’m pretty sure that simply holding a kitten can help lower your blood pressure and reduce your stress level.

The military is adopting out military members sercvice dogs without informing the soldiers and allowing them to keep their dogs.

A Congressional investigation is underway.

Read more….…

You’ve heard the humorous axioms about doing something while chewing gum while doing something else.

“It is my indignant opinion that 90 percent of the moving pictures exhibited in America are so vulgar, witless and dull that it is preposterous to write about them in any publication not intended to be read while chewing gum.”
–Wolcott Gibbs

In my apparent series of articles about writing a book and what I’m learning along the way – using WordPress to write a book, my research library, what I’m learning about myself at the same time – is that this book writing thing, specifically the non-fiction category is fraught with pitfalls and research.…