Full Circle ...

Farewell, Master, yet not farewell.
Where I go, ye too shall dwell.
I am gone, before your face,
A moment's time, a little space.
When ye come where I have stepped
Ye will wonder why ye wept.
~Edwin Arnold


When I first met Tex,he was ten weeks old, and I had just graduated from college.

I had been thinking, for several months, about getting a dog. I was raised with dogs, and, in fact, could hardly imagine a house and life without at least one of these tail-wagging, good-natured companions. Even so, I had been dogless since my previous pooch had been killed by a hit-and-run driver when I was in middle school. Sure, my family had had dogs after his passing, but, in my mind, they did not belong to me. Even after the passage of so many years, I still grieved for that beloved pet I had lost -- a dog that was my almost-constant companion, that seemed to read my every mood, that never left my side, even to the point of sleeping outside my bedroom window so that he could be near me. To say that his death had left a void in my life is a gross understatement. And, life conspired with my own grief to keep me pet-free. After all, dorm life is not conducive to dog ownership. But, having reached graduation day and facing the prospect of life on my own out there in the big, wide world, I decided it was finally time to bring a new dog into my life.

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