Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all. - Emily Dickinson It’s spring here in Pennsylvania, and as I take my morning walks with Cassie, I marvel in the renewal of nature that I see everywhere around me. It was a hard winter with single-digits cold and snowstorm after snowstorm. The cold was made all the more bitter by the winds of a pandemic that locked us up inside our homes and cut us off f

One of the many benefits of owning a dog is the way they hold up a mirror to our human foibles and help us become more aware, awake and alive. In the four-plus years that I’ve had Cassie, my first German Shorthair Pointer, she’s helped me become aware of many personal areas that I need to work on. My patience, for example. I’m not a patient person, and that’s not a good thing when you have a GSP that has the tendency to create chaos wherever she goes because of her boundless