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Friday links

10 Comments

  1. Comrade X
    Comrade X July 12, 2019 1:51 pm

    When I was a teenager my dog was my best friend! He would always be waiting for me when I got home on the bus at the end of our road.

  2. MP
    MP July 12, 2019 2:43 pm

    “My empathetic young dog, my only confidant, was abruptly “disappeared” by my parents one day when I was in junior high school…”

    This must be the saddest thing I have heard in a long time. There were many times as a youth that I felt only the animals in my life understood me or even really cared very much about me or my concerns. Words fail me when I try to think how parents could do this.

    On another note re: the NYT article, I worked at Whitfield School when Sunshine was brought in as a puppy to take the place of the previous school dog who was getting pretty advanced in age. THe school dog, a tradition, was only one of many great things about that very special place, but one of the best. I remember one young girl (it is a grade 6-12 school) who was terribly socially awkward when she came and who only really relaxed when she was with the dog but who, through the help of that relationship, over time blossomed and opened up with people as well. A beautiful thing to see.

  3. E. Garrett Perry
    E. Garrett Perry July 13, 2019 3:03 am

    Sadly, attacking people by killing or ‘Disappearing’ their pets is a very common trick in abusive or controlling relationships, especially between parents and children. Johnny Cash’s horrible father once bought Johnny a puppy Then after a few months he forced little Johnny to kill his own puppy with a shotgun. I think he was eight or ten years old at the time.

  4. deLaune
    deLaune July 14, 2019 2:56 pm

    Lots of good links today. I especially liked:
    “But what I learned was that God wasn’t the one who needed my prayers. It was I who needed them more.”

    Both of my boys had cats growing up. We adopted the first when my oldest was two and she immediately attached herself to him. She would sit on the roof of the house every weekday afternoon, watching for him to get home from school. When she spotted him, she would jump from the roof to the carport to the top of the garbage can and saunter over to greet him.
    I called my younger son’s cat “The Supervisor.” No matter what he was doing, she would watch him like a hawk, moving around from time to time to get a better view.
    I’m sure that their pets made growing up a bit easier for them. Both my boys are very independent and, to this day, don’t think much of dogs. “Too clingy.”

  5. ellendra
    ellendra July 14, 2019 8:04 pm

    ” Johnny Cash’s horrible father once bought Johnny a puppy Then after a few months he forced little Johnny to kill his own puppy with a shotgun. I think he was eight or ten years old at the time.”

    Sounds like Hydra’s initiation ceremony.

  6. Alan
    Alan July 15, 2019 8:18 am

    I’ve been internet detoxing by teaching myself guitar and learning Spanish and Irish on Duolingo. Still on the internet but I feel like I’m better for how the time is spent.

  7. Claire
    Claire July 16, 2019 12:45 pm

    Alan — Learning Irish! Fantastic. “Tiocfaidh ar la!”

  8. Claire
    Claire July 16, 2019 1:01 pm

    Thank you, MP and E. Garrett Perry.

    Although Johnny Cash’s horror story puts mine to shame, it was indeed one of the worst things. The poor dog — kept outside, young and bored — had pulled some laundry off the clothesline. He didn’t even damage it; he only got it dirty. But that was that. When I came home from school, my dog was gone. I was 13, maybe 12, and it wasn’t a good start what turned out to be very hard years.

    I still wonder what became of that dog and if he somehow managed to have a happy ending against all the odds.

    What my parents did seemed “normal” then, however much it jolted the world. But the older and wiser I get, and the more I understand both dogs and people, the more outrageous that act (along with quite a few others) is in retrospect. Cruel to dogs, cruel to children, just plain cruel.

    When I hear people remark on how their parents “got smarter as I got older,” I shake my head. There are so many ways to live and be in this world, and the more I see, the more I realize how childishly nasty many of the supposedly “adult” choices in my world were. So much unnecessary pain.

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