My Dog Daisy

Today will be a bit of a departure from the norm. After reading a wonderful blog post by Jocelynn Drake, I decided to help out the good people at Pedigree and write a blog about a dog, thus helping them with their quest to donate pounds and pounds of dog food to shelters. A link to her blog, if you wish to read her story:
http://jocelynndrake.blogspot.com/2011/08/write-post-help-dog.html

And from her page, this is why I'm doing this:
Pedigree has decided to launch a Write a Post, Help a Dog Campaign. For those of you who missed the event last year in September, 391 bloggers wrote about the program and with each post, Pedigree donated 20 pounds of its Healthy Longevity dog food to shelter animals. In all, 7,820 pounds of food was donated to two shelters known across the country for their dedication to the care and re-homing of senior dogs: Muttville Senior Dog Rescue in San Francisco and Castaway Critters in Harrisburg, Pa.

How you can help in 2011


Simply spread the word about Write a Post, Help a Dog 2011 and once again Pedigree will donate 20 pounds of food for each blog post. If you don’t have a blog feel free to tweet about the campaign or share on Facebook so your friends who do blog can participate. All bloggers are welcome even if you do not generally talk about pets on your blog. Its all about using Social Media for Social Good.

Here’s how it works:
•The Write a Post, Help a Dog program is aimed at raising awareness of the more then 4 million dogs that wind up in shelters and breed rescues each year. As well as to help get them all food (our goal is 10,000 lbs of food in the next two weeks) for the more than four million dogs that wind up in shelters and breed rescues each year.


•For each blog post mentioning the Pedigree Foundation from now until midnight ET on September 3, Pedigree will donate 20 pounds of its new dry Pedigree recipe food for dogs — its best recipe ever — to a shelter, because every dog deserves leading nutrition.


•The Pedigree Foundation — a 501 (C)(3) nonprofit organization is committed to helping dogs by providing grants to shelters and rescues and encouraging dog adoption. This year the Foundation has already raised more than $376,570 against its goal of $1.5 million to carry out its work to fund grants that not only help shelters operate, but to further shelter innovations.

Alright, now that you know the why and the how, here's my story about my dog, Daisy.

My baby sister and I had a very good childhood, very stable and with plenty of money (although we probably didn't realize it at the time). As middle-class, slightly more privileged children, my parents thought we should get a dog when we were young; my dad grew up with dogs, especially Dobermans. I can't remember if my mom had dogs as a young girl, but I know if she did, hers were of the smaller variety. When we went to pick out a new Labrador puppy, my mother was shocked at the size of the mamma dog. She thought she was huge! My dad wisely told his buddy to hurry up and get the pups into the room, and that was all she wrote; we took Daisy home in a laundry basket and loved her from that very moment.

Now, I know this will be super-hard for some to believe, but I was a very shy kid growing up. I usually had one "best friend" in my class every year, if that; my books were my friends and my comfort when I was lonely, sad, or scared. Then there was Daisy. She truly was my one best and constant friend while I was growing up. She didn't care that she, a black Lab, had been named for a white flower. She didn't care that I was shy and awkward. She didn't even care that I upchucked orange juice on her one horrible winter afternoon (looooooooong story); she loved me no matter what. She knew when I needed a hug, and when I just needed someone to sit beside me and be there. She was a wonderful dog who had a very good life, and when we lost her in 1985, it was devastating to my teenage self. How do you recover from the loss of a best friend? Time, as they say, does heal old wounds. However, it doesn't take away the scar, and to this day, I still get teary-eyed thinking about her. So this post is honor of my best friend Daisy, who crossed that rainbow bridge long ago. Still love you, and we'll see each other again someday.