I haven’t been able to talk about it or write about it until now, but we lost our little dog, Chipper, a couple of months ago.  You may be familiar with him through the picture on my website under ‘Contact Don’, the Statler website or maybe through the preface I wrote in the front of Sunday Morning Memories.

I wrote about how we would play ball in the back yard while I thought out my first drafts to each chapter.  Then when I came in to write at the computer, he would lie at my feet in a little cubbyhole under my desk.  He never moved until I did unless my writing ran into his mealtimes.

He ate every day at noon and 5pm.  He came and found us and let us know when it was time to eat.  And daylight savings time caused him no concern at all.  He ate by the sun so those times became 11am and 4pm.  He had a little clock inside that even told him when it was bedtime.  He would often go up by himself and turn in.

We had a ritual every day that started when I retired from the road.  I read two newspapers each morning and he would jump up on my lap and sleep until the final page was turned.  There are so many more quirks and habits I could relate, but I know many of you have pets you love just as dearly and easily understand what I’m trying to say here.  Debbie and I miss him terribly and it’s just as simple as that. He was only ten years old and we just weren’t quite ready to lose him yet. But he was sick and it had to be.

What’s the interim before having another pet?  Debbie felt sooner than later was better as a new little pal would help the healing and I know now she was right. So here comes Lucy, a little red, five-pound, eight-week-old Cocker.  She is wild, crazy, and able to be in 20 places at once.  She wears out the grandkids and they in turn wear her out until she falls exhausted for hours where?….at my feet.  Asleep with her head propped on the toe of my shoe.

In my new book, The Mulligans of Mt Jefferson, there is a dog as there usually is in everything I write.  A dog in a scene or in a house makes it more real and a little warmer for me so I often have one there to meet a character as he walks in a door.  It wasn’t hard this time for me to come up with the right name.

I named him Chipper.

-DSR           November 16, 2011     9:15 a.m.

THE MULLIGANS OF MT JEFFERSON – RELEASE DATE JANUARY 1, 2012

Gadhafi is dead; Chaz Bono has survived six weeks of Dancing with
the Stars; and the new Barbie Doll has a neck tattoo.

Have I lived too long for the world to make sense or has ‘sense’ changed?

    Newspapers are dying at an unbelievable rate; Country Music sounds like 80s Rock; and prime time TV sitcoms have lost all boundaries of decency.

Could it be the world really is flat after all?

    The left-wing marchers are attacking big corporations on one side of town while the right-wing marchers are attacking big government on the other side; and a high school Homecoming Queen kicked the game-winning field goal last week in Pinckney, Michigan.

Maybe the world is just off its axis a little bit.

    The unemployment rate in America is presently at 9%; one out of every six people in the United States is living below the poverty line; and the Kardashian family made 65 million dollars last year.

Maybe the world is picking up steam in that hell bent roll downhill.

    I only go to about five or six movies a year because Hollywood doesn’t make what I want to see; Hollywood doesn’t make what I want to see because I only go to five or six movies a year; and Lady Gaga, Rhianna, Kanye, Zooey and Eminem are actually peoples’ names.

Okay, maybe the world will wake up in the morning and find all this is really a dream.

God I hope so.

                                      DSR -October 20, 2011    8:15 p.m.