This is what we saw on vacation

It’s almost like being there, right?

Have a great 2009.

6:00p – We convinced Carter to stop playing Wii to join us with our election watching. Archie, though, is watching Scooby Doo on the other iMac.

6:35p – BBC World News coverage rocks. Great for kids, too, since they explain everything. Lots of Brits and foreigners to educate.

6:43p – “90% say candidate’s race not an issue” text is juxtaposed with discussion of the Bradley Effect. Boys are whining over spilled milk, hoping the liquid will disappear on its own without interrupting Scooby.

6:58p – Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, Indiana, and Vermont kick off the electoral college watch. It will be 6a in the UK by the time Sarah Palin’s Alaska closes their polls.

7:01p – projections: Kentucky (8) to McCain … Vermont (3) to Obama.

7:07p – The Brit announcers all have red poppy flower things in their lapels. Also, Liverpool won their football game on a penalty kick.

7:15p – Indiana plays the most prominent and pivotal role in the success of Barack Obama, according to Newsweek.

Newsweek Scorecard

7:24p – Watching the huge crowds in Grant Park and thinking about 13 year old girls in Somalia. Wondering how much effect changes in the US could have around the world.

7:28p – WFIU is giving Indiana back to Mitch Daniels. Bummer. Hoping for an Obama bump that would put Thompson in charge and get rid of Daylight Savings Time.

7:30p – North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia polls are closed.

7:34p – BBC reports FOX is calling West Virginia for McCain. BBC won’t call anything until they get their own information.

7:40p – Teeth in Archie’s mouth are brushed. Time to read, perchance to dream. America, don’t do anything foolish while I’m gone.

8:14p – Carter greeted me with news that his NaNoWriMo story is going to incorporate a Presidential race. Also, Monroe County voted for Mitch Daniels, but Elizabeth Dole lost her race (to the “heathen”).

8:18p – Obama is up 103-34 in the electoral vote count, thanks to a projected win in Pennsylvania. Only 32% of Indiana reporting thus far. … John Sununu lost his Senate seat, bringing the Dems up 5 seats. w00t!

8:25p – Best tweet of the night so far belongs to Jake Panovich: “Right now CNN reports Obama has about 1.337 million votes. How eleetist.”

8:31p – I’m loving our family politicking, but I’m jealous of my Informatics colleagues camped out at the IMU with Luke Russert of NBC. Obama up 103-49.

Luke Russert Reporting for NBC from IU

8:40p – Now added group chat on Meebo with Richie and other locals. Very multi-modal. We’ve got Twitter + chat + BBC + two computers + liveblog + NaNoWriMo. Still 90 minutes to Comedy Central. … Fail Whales starting, alas.

8:45 – Lake Shore Drive from 33st avenue to Grand is blocked off in Chicago. Sis-in-law Meg can’t get any closer, but she took a picture of George Bush frowning on the Crown Fountain.

8:55p – Locally, Geoff McKim and the other Democrats move into the lead for Monroe County Council with 5% of precincts reporting. BBC folks see 52% of Indiana in with 51-48 McCain lead.

9:01p – TechPresident is hosting the VoteReport liveblogging of the election. Obama up 171-52 now.

9:09p – Carter is at 4168 words in NaNoWriMo. He then exclaims: “This is so exciting. I never realized boring old votes could be so exciting.” … BBC says FOX is calling everything early, “Trying to get it out of the way, it seems.” Pip pip.

9:16p – BBC has two people sitting at laptops surfing the web for information. One mentioned Twitter, and then said an insider in the McCain camp in Florida says they lost the state (and probably the election).

9:24p – Indecision 2008 servers are swamped. Just trying to confirm when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are going to entertain. There is a chance Obama will clinch the nomination before it starts. I hope they are watching John Bolton put the “ass” in Ambassador.

9:35p – Obama leads 195-90. Katrina chased most of the Obama supporters out of Louisiana, giving it to McCain. The H-T has had their local election site down for most of the hour with the message: “Please stand by while we adjust for changes in accounting procedures at the clerk’s office … ”

9:42p – Carter, bounding around when Obama reached 200, has now been contained under a blanket on the couch. Just in time for Texas to give all their votes to McCain.

9:58p – Stunned by how far CNN’s breaking news email is behind Twitter. About to say goodbye to BBC World News and hello to Comedy Central.

10:07p – Epic intros by the Indecision ’08 folks. Stewart has blue cards. Colbert has red. And another favorite tweet by Noah: “Wolf Blitzer just told us that the red states are for McCain and the blue states are for Obama… ”

10:14p – The H-T came back up. Geoff McKim is in fourth, about 400 votes behind. Jason Jones is “live” in Chicago, in front of a Disney set of bluebirds and deer: “This is what Chicago looks like when Obama is in town”

10:18p – A special Twitter account, wfiuelection08, is reporting: “presidential race is tightening in Indiana, now 50% to 49% for McCain, 86% of precincts reporting”

10:26p – Flat-tax advocate and editor Steve Forbes is on Indecision 08. The last time I saw him, Daily Show was making fun of him for not blinking during an entire interview as a Presidential candidate in 2000, suggesting he was an alien. Also, Stewart on McCain: “Isn’t it odd that a guy with 14 houses is done in by a credit crisis.”

10:34p – Stephen Colbert is live blogging about Twittering tweets. … Monroe County is stuck on 73% precincts reporting, and Indiana is at 88%. Obama trails McCain by fewer than 4,000 votes, or the equivalent of an IU football game home crowd.

10:45p – Archie is up again, asking for water and ready to fall asleep again on the couch. Carter is demanding that Comedy Central be “live” … a problem when we are trying to filter out the late-night ads.

10:51p – Charles Ogeltree, a friend from Harvard, jokes that he thought the Obamas were going to be Republicans. Colbert is now looking at tonight as a big win. The answer to http://isobamapresident.com/ is: “Almost”

Is Obama President? … Almost

10:54p – Indiana just went Obama, with 93% of precincts reporting. About 6500 vote lead. Obama also just won Virginia, Democratic for the first time since “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho.”

11:01p – Jon Stewart called it for Obama, conveniently before signing off. CNN just called it, with 297 electoral votes for Obama, 145 for McCain.

Is Obama President? … Yes!

11:08p – Back to BBC. Ready for news about Indiana. 94% reporting. Archie is racked out on the couch, but Carter is happy like the rest of us.

11:17p – Just got Colorado to move to 306. Waiting for McCain’s concession so we can hear Obama’s victory speech. BBC is interviewing Tracy Chapman. Um, OK.

11:18p – McCain is conceding. His crowd is booing Obama. He offers sympathy for the death of his grandmother. “I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but in offering goodwill to come together.”

TwitScoop at the start of John McCain’s concession speech

11:30p – The boys didn’t make it through McCain’s speech. Glad Carter got to be around for the moment Obama got his electoral votes. The only suspense left: Will Indiana officially become blue, and what will the president-elect say?

11:45p – As anticipated, there was a huge surge of Twitter traffic the moment the word came that Obama got his 270 votes. I’m still getting the catch-up tweets. Looks like Obama may be speaking in about 15 minutes.

11:50p – This is the first time I have voted for the guy who won. Dukakis … Perot … No one … Nader … Barbara Lee … now, Obama. Lots of primary disappointments between 1988 and 2008. BTW, Gore Vidal is giving the BBC guy a difficult time (“I don’t know who you are” and “If you let me talk …” and “I’m surprised you asked the question, because I know so much about the topic.”). In true Brit form, the newscaster closes with, “Well, that was fun.”

11:58p – Up 23 seats in the House, some. Indiana is at 97% with a 6K lead for Obama, who is about to speak.

12:00p – “Tonight is your answer”

12:15p – “We are not red states or blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America.” … “Change has come to America.” … “We, as a people, will get there.” … “This victory tonight is not the change we seek. It is the chance to make that change.” … 106 years of America, as seen by Anne Nixon Cooper. …22 seats gained in the House. 6 seats gained in the Senate. And one new puppy in the White House.

TwitScoop in the midst of the Obama victory speech

Stuck at 97%

Still no word on Indiana. Still, not a bad day for a skinny kid with a funny name.

Today also happens to be my youngest son’s fifth birthday. Archie has been excited about it for weeks. Number 5 was a big one for me, too. It was the first time I counted down the days and could later recall the presents I got. In a few hours, Archie will be surprised with a fuzzy robot Panda that is tops on his most recent wish list.

I’m amazed we were able to get anything at all.

Not too long ago, I had to ask one of my oldest and dearest friends for some financial help. This is the second time he has come through for me since deciding to return to graduate school and in the process relocate my family by a couple tax brackets. It is never easy asking for help, but the consequences of saying nothing ranged from loss of insurance to defaulting on mortgage to starvation. We could pick our poison.

One such request was not sufficient to get us out of the jam, either; My father had to help out, too. All this took place before the stock market crashed, making the generosity that much greater. Throw in annual April panic and tragedy, and it is assured that it takes a village to earn a doctorate.

Money and I have never had a great relationship. Very important people in my life need me to get some, so I do my best in between classes and papers and parenting. Indiana University gives me a little, certainly enough for a single grad student to get by, but not a family of 4+ requiring medical coverage.

Supplemental jobs are available, but at a cost of time and sleep. I am seriously considering becoming a part-time student in the spring to increase the money in the family bank account. The more work I do now, the longer we have to endure this lifestyle. To that end, I made a commitment to push through the summer and accelerate the academics to try and graduate as quickly as possible. However, my analogy of sprinting the last 8 miles of a marathon comes with the risk of hitting a wall and not finishing.

The single most impacting bit of legislation that could be passed to address poverty is making health care a right instead of a commodity. More than half of the stipend I get for 20 or so hours of associate instructor work each week goes toward providing my wife and kids with mediocre coverage. Universal health care—or just a University footing the bill—won’t keep us from piling up student loans, but it does keep the roof over our head and puts some food in our bellies.

We are not habitually poor. We are optimistically so. The optimistic poor are people who will have the means to rise above poverty but are fighting through the process to get there.

At some point, I’ll have a job, be it academic or in industry. We’ll get a paycheck, probably with less work than the insane hours I’m putting into this endeavor now. The mountain of student loans will eventually be paid off, as will the rest of our mortgage. For today, though, I have to worry about whether my son’s fifth birthday will come with a present.

It was disguised in a cheerful ringtone, but I knew what it was about. There was a moment, though, when I considered other possibilities.

Me: Hello?
Vet: Kevin Makice? We’re calling about your dog.
Me: Is she …
Vet: Completely fine. Yeah, yeah. It’s a miracle. Could you come get her now? Her barking is driving us crazy.

Completely plausible, even at a more reasonable time of the day. Snooks had the bark of an elephant.

Amy already captured the life of Snooks quite well, but I wanted to share one more memory.

We drove up to Indy last night, the third pet visit to that clinic for us and second trip for Snooks. On the ride up, she lay on some blankets in my lap. All 58 pounds of her. She panted non-stop, at a rate of what we would discover a few hours later to be 287 beats per minute—more than twice the metabolism of a normal dog. Her coat, despite a recent bath, seemed perpetually flaky. I spent the hour-long drive stroking the black hair off her body and onto my white shirt.

Thirteen years ago, we took a different car ride with her.

We went to a local animal shelter in New Orleans back in late 1995. Amy was about to graduate from Tulane with her second degree, and we were longing for a dog to take back to the midwest with us. We were looking for an “authentic” bayou pooch known as a Catahoula. Instead we found a small room with about a dozen kennels separating the various stray or abandoned dogs on death row. We were going to save one, and proceeded to scan for candidates.

Amy was very attracted to a little yip-yip dog. It was a lot like her childhood pet, Ruffles, and it also fit my preference for small. Unfortunately, we were told it was in the pen because of a failure to get along with the previous owner’s cats. We had two of those. Thus, no Ruffles II. All of the dogs were equally appealing, equally flawed. Too big. Too old. Too drooly. Our choice was to be our first “couples” dog, so were were hoping for a perfect match.

In the first kennel by the door sat a small black and white dog. She just sat, wagging her tail and waiting patiently for us to make our inevitable decision. She didn’t bark or throw herself at the kennel door, like the others. She just watched us make the rounds.

The person on duty told us that the little dog had been found wandering the neutral ground on a local highway. She was a terrier, she told us, and probably nearly fully grown. They were off by several breeds and about 35 pounds, but we didn’t know that at the time. Probably wouldn’t have made a difference—we had found our friend.

We filled out the papers and left to make a pit stop at Pet Smart for some supplies. A bed. A bowl. A couple squeaky chewy things. Amy drove, and I held our little “terrier” in my lap. The dog had fleas. For the first few minutes, the excitement of a car ride kept her up against the window, looking at the crazy world go by at a much faster pace than when she had been hoofin’ it down the highway. Then, our little dog fell asleep in my lap, the kind of sleep that says one adventure just ended.

That’s the same dog that sat in my lap on the road to Indy. Heavier, now drooling. Still not barking, although it was probably the first time I longed to hear that distinctive, booming woof that could shake windows a neighborhood away. We named her after a local blues musician, Snooks Eaglin, to keep her connected with her Louisiana roots. She panted too much to fall asleep, but Snooks was in my lap.

Thanks, everyone, for the comments and tweets. This Web 2.0 thing worked out well for us this week. You’ve given us all some strength.

When she was about 8 months old, she broke into my toiletries bag and ate a bunch of vitamins. This time all she required was a little monitoring and a room with fewer chew temptations.

Our Miss Snooks is having another faceoff with death

A few years later, Kevin and I were relaxing after work when suddenly we heard a horrible dog cry and all the lights went out. Snooks shorted out the apartment while chewing on a lamp cord. Again, with diuretics and something for the scorch marks on her mouth, she was good as new—theoretically, more cheerful for the shock therapy, and definitely less likely to chew on electric cords. She never dances with death in the same way twice.

Right around Carter’s first birthday, Snooks got hit by a car. The driver hit Snooks only after swerving to avoid the beagle leading her out an open gate and into temptation. Despite being in shock by the time we got her to the vet’s, she survived without major surgery. Kevin slept in a playpen with her for two weeks while she recovered.

Less than a year ago, Snooks rapidly lost weight and wasn’t acting like herself. Our vet felt her stomach, looked at me and said, “Mmmm. Shit.” The result was a splenectomy that had immediate positive results—before she had recovered from the surgery incision she was acting three years younger. We’ve had a pleasant year enjoying the results of what seemed a veterinary gamble. She’s a survivor.

Out of the Bayou
We added Snooks to our family from the Orleans Parrish Humane Society before moving back to Illinois in 1995. We were hoping for a more snuggly animal, since both our cats were rather standoffish. We didn’t get snuggly. In fact, when our feet would accidentally touch her (back in the days she could still jump that high), she’d huff off to the other side of the bed. She wouldn’t leave the room, though—she always stayed within eyesight. Instead of snuggly, we got watchful.

Through four moves, two beagles, and two births, Snooks has watched over us. She communicates by making strange singsong throat noises if we fail to feed her promptly, and by less subtle growly noises if the kids are trying to sit on her head. She refuses to relax, pacing, singing and nose nudging until all visitors stop speaking to us and address her directly, preferably with a scratch and a treat.

She watches everything. With the birth of Carter she became even more watchful. Our beagle, Cleo, pouted for about a week, but Snooks immediately took charge of watch duty: making sure she slept within eyesight of Carter. She did the same thing when Archie joined our lives.

Yesterday she stopped drinking water. This morning she continued her water strike, had trouble standing, and had the dry heaves. I made an emergency appointment at the vet’s office (our actual vet is in China right now) and then urged them to see her early, as she was going downhill quickly over the course of a few hours. Labored breathing, pale gums and that calm, stoic manner she adopts when her life is in danger all contributed to my panic.

Right now she’s hooked up to an IV, getting fluids, maybe getting a little food over the next few hours. Something is in her stomach, looking suspiciously similar to the mass that prompted the splenectomy. I’m just not sure how many pieces of her we can remove. We want her to be comfortable, happy and alive. We could use help doing that, because the grad school insurance barely covers the humans in our family.

There’d be a hole in the Makice heart without Snooks’ watchful eyes.

Addendum: We just got home from the emergency vet in Indianapolis. Snooks is spending the night there. When we arrived in Indy I walked the boys down the street to get some food. Carter found a dandelion and picked it up, explaining to Archie how he could make a wish and it would come true if he blew off all the seeds.

Carter: Oh my gosh! I blew off all the seeds! I never imagined I’d be able to do it! My wish will come true!

Archie: What’d you wish for, Carter?

Carter: I can’t say or it won’t come true.

When we were getting ready to leave Snooks in the care of the doctors for the night, Carter insisted he needed to see Snooks first, because he had something to give her. Then he set the empty dandelion head by her bandaged paw.

This was the Christmas of my youth. There were always slight variations, of course, reflecting the context of any given year. I have since married into some new traditions, such as a gift exchange party on Christmas Eve, and four times as many obligations to relatives. I am also in the process of co-creating brand new ones that the boys will carry on when they build new families of their own.

The latest addition—joining live Christmas trees that can be planted in January and the Magic Box, a form of Santa-attributed morning event in December that brings a holiday inspired present to the boys—is Feral Santa. FS is an adorable hand puppet of Santa Claus that showed up in the Magic Box and turned into a nighttime ritual of animal attacks and torn flesh. Happy Holidays.

I can’t take full credit for Feral Santa, thankfully. It was a co-created effort one morning a couple weeks ago.

Less than a week away from the end of the semester with several papers yet to complete, I had crashed on the couch for a couple hours respite from the computer. I awoke in the usual fashion—two energetic boys jumping on me asking for acknowledgment. This is typically a slow process that involves Archie alternating between asking to watch something on the big TV and demanding food. Those moments just after he wakes up have Carter at his best, so he is filled with patience for the rest of his family and willingly repeats his own requests until a response surfaces.

That particular morning, the Magic Box produced a small Santa Claus hand puppet. The boys shoved it in my face so it was the first thing I saw when my eyes opened. A bit startling. And I was a bit cranky. Under orders to do so, I calmly slipping Santa onto my hand, slowly turning the creature so his beady black plastic eyes faced their eager faces. Then, I pounced.

With growls and rabid snarling, Santa attempted to dismember my two boys by attacking hands, feet, tummies and noses. He would momentarily pause to glare, breathing in a quick, threatening manner. The boys were delighted:

Carter: Mom! Save us! It’s Santa. He’s feral. It’s Feral Santa!

Feral Santa rested just long enough to appreciate that my son knew what feral meant. But with each sudden, too-close motion by the boys, FS would leap into action again.

About five minutes was all the energy I could muster that morning. The day’s routine went on, as usual. But in the evening, Feral Santa was requested for an encore performance. Carter was particularly frenetic in the afternoon, so the promise of another episode of “When Santas Attack” was enough not only to get his wiggles out, but also brought complete and prompt compliance with the bedtime rituals of bathroom and books. When the same request came the next night, I knew Feral Santa was destined to become a holiday tradition, right up there with cheesy egg soufflé and white chocolate Lindt balls in my oversized stocking.

Since that first weekend, the boys have grown more bold. The game of Feral Santa has evolved into a quest to steal pillows. They have teamed up to attack the attacking elf in a self-sacrificial manner, allowing the partner to sneak up and take a prize back to their fortress. They are no longer feigning fear. It is war. Yuletide war. I re-aggravate my sprained thumb constantly, stopping the nightly game when my throat grows too sore from snarling. I assume the ritual will cease completely sometime after the Santa references become seasonally passe. But the moment this particular puppet finds its way back into the Magic Box next year, Feral Santa will live once more.

In the wrong hands, this puppet turns into a snarling monster.

It’s not a “ha-ha” funny or even “peculiar” funny as much as just plain unexpected. My life seems to be brimming with that variety. Our evening plans involved a belated Valentine’s Day dinner in town, and I was already running late for a mall run that afternoon. A funny thing had already happened on my way out of my new office that delayed my errand. And prior to that came a string of funny things conspiring to put me in a constant state of tardiness. By the time I heard the doorbell ring Friday afternoon, I was hardly in the mood for funny things.

A woman stood at the door. Like a number of unexpected visitors on our busy street on the outskirts of Bloomington, she had the look of someone about to ask for directions. Instead, she asked if I knew who had the black and white dog in the neighborhood.

Immediately, I put two and two together and came up with three-point-five. When we had contracted some people to build my dream office in the basement, one of them had accidentally left our back gate open. Without thinking to look, we had let our two dogs out to play and poop. They like to romp, however, and when they saw the break in the fence, Snooks and Cleo bolted for the great unknown. We caught them shortly afterward joyously running through the front yards of various neighbors. Snooks had even found time to roll in something disgusting, prompting a corrective bath. Since the cable guy had shown up at midday with a free service upgrade, it immediately clicked that he probably left the gate open and freed our fun-loving animals.

The woman, Jane Collins, followed me around the side of the house as I tried to hide my embarrassment for my pooches being loose. I nabbed Cleo right away after he assumed the “yes, I did it” submissive roll to expose his considerable belly. Jane continued to speak, but I was only half listening as I focused on corralling the pets. It was only a moment or two after seeing Snooks lying down quietly by our back door that it sunk in.

“I hit your dog,” she repeated.

There was no blood gushing forth or grotesquely broken bones. Just a serene Dalmatian-Border Collie mutt laying by the door. Panting. Quiet. Maybe too quiet.

The next several minutes were blurred. I know I told Amy our dog got hit, indicting the cable guy with some disdain. I know I surprised Jane by asking for her phone number and address, which I’m sure might have been misconstrued as the first step toward a lawsuit or forwarding of veterinary bills. Seeing her puzzled look, I asked, “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

It wasn’t like I knew. Three dogs, five cats and several dozen rodents had preceded Snooks to the Isbister household. Though there had been some violent deaths among them — I once watched my favorite gerbil get gobbled up by a visiting Irish Setter — none have ever died on the street. If anything, it was the Vet I had to fear. Between euthanasia and a couple failed attempts to keep our pets breathing, emergency trips to the local veterinarian had ended in disaster. Still, neither Amy or I hesitated in rounding up Carter and a checkbook and heading to the clinic.

Snooks was definitely in shock, with eyes a bit glazed and skin startin to gray. I was in shock, too, not even noticing when she pooped on the way out of the car onto the stretcher. I stayed with Snooks while th vets spent the next hour stabilizing her and Amy scooted around town making arrangements for a possible vigil. Our dinner plans were scuttled. Now, we had only to worry about the inconvenience, the bill and how many pets we would have at the end of the day.

The answer to that last question is three. That’s the way it has been for a while now, and we’ve been given no reason to think that number will decrease in the near future. Snooks survived, even if it took a couple thousand dollars to improve the odds of that happening. At the end of this particular day, I will again be convinced it was money well spent when I rub the ears of my dog before I go to sleep.

The inconvenience also survives. Already tight trying to get our basement remodeling done, we lost an entire bathroom when that car hit Snooks. We lost an entire weekend, even if we managed to make it back to Bloomington with enough confidence to attend the Indiana-Illinois game. I lost a romantic dinner out on the town and a chance to recover between two weeks of grueling programming. At least we have the Noggin channel.

And our beloved Snooks.

Not everyone would do what we did for their pet. Since she was stabilized in Bloomington, maybe someone else might not have spent the time and money to whisk her up to Indianapolis and pay several hundred dollars for her care. Since she didn’t look too bad immediately after getting hit, maybe someone else might not have bothered with the local vet and instead just watched her to see whether she got better. Since she was only a dog, someone else might scheduled a trip to the pound next week for a replacement if things went south.

Everyone, of course, has their own approach when dealing with animals. Ours is to view them as a vital part of our family. Different than Carter in pecking order and potential to develop, but no less deserving of our love and respect. We wouldn’t have taken any chances if it had been Carter at the receiving end of a license plate, and we weren’t about to take chances with the care for Snooks.

Looking back, there were a lot of funny things that had to happen to allow us make our decisions.

Jane Collins could have driven differently — slower, more deliberately, louder — to avoid hitting our wandering beast. Our dogs could have been content to taunt neighborhood pets and roll in things and on this side of the street. We could have stepped outside our back door and confirmed that the gate we always leave latched still was before letting the two dogs free to roam the back yard. The cable guy could have shut the fence gate, leaving it in the same position he found it when he replaced some outside wiring. I could have declined the free cable upgrade. Or better yet, just don’t answer the phone.

We don’t have to look very far into the past to find ways we could have prevented the future. Life, however, isn’t meant to be served that way. It’s about how we respond to tragedy, not the lengths one may go to avoid it.

I’m pleased by the response to this particular tragedy. Amy juggled a distraught husband with a needy baby and a small SUV so skillfully we could have scheduled this in our Palm Pilots. She placed the necessary calls and made the arrangements for vets and hotels and food, all the while torn up inside over the same what-ifs I had. We got transportation, babysitting and pet care from our family when we needed it most. We got honest recommendations from the doctors charged with keeping Snooks in the family. Most of all, we had a neighbor who cared enough about what happened to stop and let us know our dog was hit by her car.

That is the one response that stands out for me. Not everybody stops to investigate after hitting an animal. Fewer still follow the dog to a nearby house and start canvassing for the pet’s owner. It is true had Jane not hit our dog, the downstairs bathroom would be ready by Mid-March. The bigger truth, though, is that had Jane not stopped to tell us about the accident, our Snooks would probably be dead. Jane Collins is why I am able to rub my dog’s ears before I fall asleep tonight. For that I am eternally grateful.

Funny thing, huh.