Ralph to the Rescue

Dogs heal.   (That’s no typo.)  An insufferable pet parent and longtime dog owner, I can tell you that—for my money, having as furry friend waiting for you at the tag end of a long, crappy day can keep both the blues and booze at bay.

My devotion to dogs began with our family’s first, a lovable Saint Bernard named Ralph.  When we had Ralph I was a young girl living with my mother and cat lover, Peg Bracken, in a hippie town called Bolinas—right on the beach, south of San Francisco, and miles away from reality.  (Proof positive:  Jefferson Airplane used to summer there, jamming, getting high and engaging in unabashed free love.) 

Among their many other talents (e.g., drooling and shedding) this ursine breed were, of course bred in part as rescue dogs.  Though he never aided a stricken alpinist, Ralph did save me many a time from eating food I did not like—notably lima beans and a few disgusting kinds of the Birdseye Vegetables Mom got by the truckload.  (Was their Carrots and Marshmallows not some science experiment gone horribly wrong?) 

I will never forget Ralph, nor the many other dogs that became part of my life—my Blue Dane, my Australian Shepherd, and my sweet but scary Rottweiler.  Each left an indelible stamp on me.

Currently, our main Rover in Residence, Genghis, is a purebred Chinook (think sled dog) possessed with a Zen-like quality that puts him forever “in the moment,” whether running a 10K or laying on the couch all day.  We lost our big, beautiful three-year-old Irish Wolfhound, Winston, to cancer earlier this year, and I thought I was going to die, but am starting to heal with the help of our new Wolfhound puppy, Maggie.

I watch documentaries showing prison inmates transformed when given cats to care for.  I cheer when seeing the same phenomenon on the new TV show Pit Bulls and Parolees.   Then I imagine all those thousands of dogs similarly “jailed” and condemned to shelters across America and think, just how hard would it be to give every prisoner a pooch? 

Naïve and wishful?  I wonder.

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