A Walk With My Friend

Every day without fail my dog walker, Annie, comes to visit me.  Annie is sweet, and she brings me cookies that she bakes special just for me.  "All the other dogs I walk have to eat Mattie cookies," Annie says to me. "You," she says as she gets down on her knees to feed me a little piece of cookie, "are special, so I bake you special cookies!"  Really what Annie means is that my kidneys are special, but I don't say anything to her, I just eat the little piece of cookie she has lovingly made for me.

Sometimes when my momma and dadz go for an evening out together, Annie comes and stays with me.  I like these times because we go for long walks along the shoreline to a little bench where we stop and sit for a while.  I sit in a cool shadow underneath the bench, chewing a bone that Annie brought for me.  I nibble at the little bits of goodness left on the bone and watch Annie as she picks up little pebbles and skips them along the clear blue water of the Sound.

When I finish my bone, Annie comes over to where I'm laying down, picks up the remains, and puts them back in her little carrying pouch.  This is when she joins me on the little knoll by the bench.  We cuddle close together for a long while.  I sit quietly, sniffing the salty scents coming from the water, and Annie strokes my back with one hand and rubs one of the left over pebbles she picked up from the beach, with the thumb of her other hand.

After a while Annie, smiling peacefully, looks down at me.

I gaze up at her with my big brown eyes, and offer a little wag of my fluffy tail.

We stay like this for a while, snuggled up on the beach.  Just sitting there together, listening to the waves wash against the shore and watch as the sun slowly settles in to the west.

"Come on my friend," says Annie, "it's time to go home."  Annie picks me up, gently brushes the sand off of my paws. When I'm all cleaned she sets me back down and off we go, walking back to my house.

Annie use to be an investor working in the One World Trade Center in New York City.  You can visit a memorial site designed to honor some of her co-workers by clicking here. After the events of 9/11 Annie decided to change the focus of her life.  I'm glad she did.

I love Annie.

With much lub,
MattieDog