Dedication of this trip and blog

This journey and blog are dedicated to the below recently-deceased dogs and to all shelter dogs in need of a loving home.

Simba

Beloved 10-year old Golden Retriever of Chris Burgess, whom we met at the very start of this trip in Acadia with Chris and his daughter Sasha. Simba, I learned, died just several weeks later after a terrible cancer was discovered.  

SUMMER

By dedicating this journey and blog to Summer, I am wishing her a speedy recovery and very long life.  You can read about Summer  by clicking here.  What an absolute sweetheart she is.

NOTE: Summer died just three weeks from a rapidly spreading cancer after I posted the above about her.  It broke my heart to learn that news. She was the consummate dog. I got the chance to meet Summer many times during my unexpected layover for five weeks in the Yukon. You can read my In Memoriam about Summer by clicking here.

Abby (2010-2016)

On September 9, 2014, on day seven of OTR VII with Erde, one month after Erde’s brother Leben was put down, I hurriedly wrote in my journal that night, and finished the day’s entry with these words: “Met Joe and Monika and their beautiful (four-year old) dog Abby tonight, traveling all over in their van.  Joe was in the catering business, so it was not surprising that we all enjoyed some wine and good conversation.  Nice couple; nice dog.”  Earlier in the evening, before the sun set, I took the below photo of Erde and Abby.  Yesterday, as I started my planning book for this year’s trip, OTR VIII with Donner, I was wondering how I should dedicate the trip. Today, I found the answer after I received a sad note from Monika and Joe that Abby died this week of a sudden terrible affliction on June 16^th.  She was just six-years old. Because Abby was the consummate dog, and Monika and Joe her devoted guardians, I proudly dedicate this trip and blog to Abby. The above photo of Abby will ride shotgun in the Defender for the entire trip. Since some of the trip will be in snow country, Abby is sure to like that, as she just loved snow (see above photo).

On my trips. There is usually little time to just sit down and chat with people, and when I do, it is usually with people who have dogs.  In all cases when I have done this, the people are good people, and so are their dogs.  Abby was a good dog, a beautiful, gentle dog, and if my heart was broken when I read the sad news today, I cannot imagine what Joe and Monika are suffering now.  I still haven’t decided whether there is a place we know as heaven.  But what I do know is that if there is, Abby is there, and she and Erde are posing for more photos like the one above, as all proud, beautiful female dogs are wont to do.

It is so sad when any dog dies, but when a young dog dies, it is also unfair.

Have a safe journey, Abby.

ERDE (2001 - 2015)

This is my first road trip in 15 years without Erde, my second one ever without her.   While Donner is sure to be a fine travel companion, the memories of Erde, and her bother Leben for so many trips, will be very hard to erase from my mind ever, on the road or off the road.  So, I also dedicate this trip to her since she will be with us in my heart,  Click here for what I wrote about Erde the very day she died last year.  I cannot add much to what I wrote then, except to say that I still miss that sweet dog, and grieve for her every day.  She made the trips worth it.

Unfortunate Shelter Dogs.

As some readers of this blog know, on October 30 last year, three weeks after Erde died, I was getting ready to leave for NYC to see some shows and operas, a trip I had originally planned to take Erde on.  As I was getting ready to leave for the train that morning, I checked my Facebook page and my eyes caught a photo and video of a four-year old German shepherd named Thunder who was in a high-kill shelter and to be put down that night. No one wanted him because he was never obedience trained, house-broken, or leash-trained, and he was sick.  I looked at the NYC tickets and asked myself, how can I go to NYC and enjoy myself knowing that that dog will be dead tonight. I put the tickets down, got a cab to Dulles Airport and the first flight out to LA, where I rented a car, drive 50 minutes to the shelter, and adopted Thunder two hours before he was to be put down.  (I now call Donner, which means Thunder in German.)  Donner made it out of that shelter in the nick of time, but many other dogs in that shelter with him did not, just as millions do not every year across the country, year in and year out.  This trip and blog are also dedicated to those dogs, sentient creatures who never had Abby’s and Erde’s good fortune of having guardians like Joe and Monika, and many others like us.

I wrote above that it is so sad when any dog dies, but when a young dog dies, it is also unfair. But when a dog dies in a shelter, young or old, without knowing the love a human might have given him or her, it is so sad beyond comprehension that we trained ourselves to not even think about it.

Ed and Donner