Say “Woof” If You Love Me

No matter how I feel each morning, I wake up to a room full of love.

Konchog Birdy starts his singing and daily recitations. Then my dogs line up at my bedside. Patch is the submissive one, but also has the rank of “The Baby,” granting him first cuddle rights. He knows it, too. Like he has a Press Pass or something. Impossibly cute, I can’t even look at him without smiling. Lotus wedges her way in and locks her warm brown eyes on mine. And then, zoink! She gives me a quick lick on the face and sits back down, staring, reloading, then zoink! Because of the attention I’m giving her, Patch begins (I’m not kidding) mooing. His pink lips curl, his head raises in protest, and he moos. Konchog loves all this activity, so he starts singing and talking louder. This is all too much for Lotus to contain herself. She is now leaping around the room like a flea, engaging Patch in a raucous morning tumble.

All my animals are rescues. Looking at what they do for me, I guess I’m a rescue, too.

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Though it may seem a geographic impossibility, Tibet lives in Arizona. After Hurricane Katrina left him homeless in 2005, he was rescued by Tara’s Babies Animal Welfare and became a lifelong resident. Right now, Tibet’s days are a mixed bag. On the one hand, he could not be more loved. On the other, he’s having difficulty breathing, gets tired easily and has numerous golfball-sized lumps at his throat. For some of us, those symptoms hit pretty close to home. Tibet needs veterinary care to diagnose and treat him. If you’d like to help with his expenses, please visit the Tara’s Babies website and do what you can to make his days a little brighter.

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Despite the fact that Rosie is not my dog and never has been, she's my big, sweet girl. She’s so near and dear to my heart, I can hardly write about her without tearing up. We came pretty close to never meeting in this life.

In 2007, Tara's Babies began working with a volunteer at an Arkansas shelter, rescuing as many dogs as they could. The “shelter” is no such thing—built on a landfill, filthy, with intact dogs roaming freely in an open pen, a high kill rate, you get the picture.

On the way to picking up two large dogs, our volunteers got a call, “Would you be able to take an additional two?” And then, “One of them is a really pregnant Rottweiler.”

I had an instant, inexplicable attachment to Rosie. As soon as I met her, she snuggled her giant bowling ball head into my neck. I mean, just look at her. She's exquisite.


I visited her the day she gave birth to 11 enormous puppies. She escorted me to them with the most human expression of pride I’ve ever seen on an animal. With the puppies outside of her, we could see how starved she was. Yet she doted on them and they all grew fat and healthy.

It took a few months to find her a perfect home, but this week Rosie was adopted by a loving family right here in Maryland. This morning as my own animal circus woke me up laughing, I thought of sweet Rosie who was no doubt doing the same.