CALL IT "KARMA"

Ever think that sometimes people come into your life for a reason? How about a dog? Have you ever wondered why certain dogs come into your life? Ever wonder why you hold onto a certain dog that you had no intention of doing so? I believe every person and every animal comes into our lives for a reason��.good and bad. I look at it as a learning experience. I have known some down right, no good for nothing, evil so and so�s but then again I know some outstanding people that I�m proud to be called one of their friends. Sometimes you�re not even looking for someone to come into your life, but in they march or sometimes tiptoe in and your life is forever changed. Some things and some people and some dogs are just meant to be together like the man and dog in this story.

This is a review about a story about a dog and a man that were �put� together or meant to be together. The book is called �ONE GOOD DOG.� From the cover of the book, it says�..�A wonderful novel: a moving, tender, and brilliantly crafted story about two fighters � one a man � one a dog hoping to leave the fight behind, who ultimately find their salvation in each other.

It is a story about a man that was a real snob and that had it all, the big job, the big money, the big houses and cars. On his constant on going climb to having it all; he commits an act that has legal, moral and financial consequences. Ultimately, he falls from grace and loses everything including family, friends and job. He ends up working in a homeless shelter where at the same time he ends up adopting a dog. Although the dog isn�t a German Shepherd, it doesn�t matter as it could have been any dog. His dog like him is also a cast out of society because he was a Pit Bull mix that had been raised for fighting. This is a story of how these two �down on their luck� characters find one another. Call it �karma� if you will, but they were brought together by their circumstances in life. It�s a story about resolutions and the bond that grows that opens the door for a better life for the man and his dog because of it.

It is a story about redemption and how a man and his homely dog that no one else wanted find beauty and love in their friendship. Although the man presents himself as a brave and powerfully tough person, he is emotionally damaged and scarred whereas, the dog also has the physical attributes of the man, he too is damaged by what has happened to him in his life as well as physically scarred.

Dog rescue people or those that have worked in shelters will love this book as well as all dog lovers. It shows one what really matters in the dog/human relationship. The rescue or shelter workers know all too well that a dog like the dog in this book is the one that most people will have had put to sleep without even given it another thought. It is this dog, this �societies reject� that takes an egotistical man and makes him understand what life is truly about. It is through his relationship with this dog that he discovers himself.

The emotionally and physically scared dog and the emotionally damaged man learn lessons that only they could have taught one another. Some dogs were just meant to be in your life even if you didn't understand why they were there to start with. Maybe it was to help teach us something that we needed to learn. This story is a �tug at your heart� emotional ride, but it�s one that you wish wouldn�t end!


From the book: "ONE GOOD DOG" - Fans of Marley and Me will find a new dog to cheer for in Wilson's (Beauty) insightful heart-tugger about Adam March, a Boston man recovering from the shame of a foolish crime, and Chance, a scrappy pit bull mix trying to escape the illegal dogfight circuit. Adam, 46, is a ruthless self-made millionaire married to an icy socialite living a picture-perfect existence that includes a teen princess daughter. Then he loses his job for slapping his assistant, Sophie, full across the face after she gives him a message that reads: Your sister called. Forty years ago, Adam's sister, Veronica, ran away leaving Adam with their widowed dad, who subsequently placed Adam into foster care. For his violent act, Adam is sentenced to perform community service at a homeless men's shelter where the adorable Chance teaches Adam about survival and what matters. Chance tells his story in his own words, which makes his mistreatment and return to the fighting pit powerfully disturbing. Combined with Wilson's unflinching portrayal of Adam's struggle to overcome his past, Old Yeller's got nothing on this very good man and his dog story.


My rating: "One Good Dog" - (4)

DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?

A few days ago I printed Kathy's first story about her dogs.  I asked her if she had any other interesting stories to please send them to me.  Well she did and this story is my favorite of the two.  I knew immediately that I wanted to share it with my readers here.   Thank you once again Kathy for sharing a part of your life with your dogs here with us. 

When our dogs leave this earth, are they truly gone?  Of course a part of them remains in our hearts forever.  Sometimes dogs that I've lost come to pay me a visit in my dreams.  They are exactly how I remembered them to be, only they're gone when I awake which makes me long for them even more.  But what about Kathy's dogs?  Did she and her husband Joe grieve so hard for their beloved dogs that their dogs felt a need to return to them to let them know it was alright to say goodbye?  Do you believe that animals have souls?   Do you believe in ghosts?  It's one of my favorite type of stories!  I can get lost in them.  Read on.....

The Magical Mulberry Tree

October 24, 2007 � Kathy Sater-Partch

There was once a man that was down by a river pondering his life. There appeared a man that spoke to him of many wonderful things to come; he then vanished as quickly as he appeared. Many years later this same man appeared to him to teach him more wonderful things. He asked this familiar person, aren't you the man that came to me while at the river many years ago? The man's response was: why don't you go back there and ask him?

A true teacher will not validate or invalidate a person's experience. It is always up to us to discern what is real to us or not!

I would like to share this phenomenon with you. About two years ago my husband, Joe and I were sitting at our kitchen-Island reminiscing about our late, white German Shepherd Dog, Lobo and how much we missed him. Shortly after that conversation I got up and went to the kitchen sink. When I looked out the window above the sink at our large mulberry tree in the back yard, there was a perfect image of Lobo's face on its trunk. I had to look twice to believe what I was looking at. I said to Joe, �Come quickly to the window and tell me what you see on the mulberry tree.� In a second of his glance he said, �Oh my! It�s an image of Lobo's face!� Not the image of any shepherd. It was the exact image of this photo I had taken of of him laying by that tree years ago. The same photo I used in a story I had written about him, titled: "Divine Messenger." It wasn't my imagination; Joe saw it right away too. I ran quickly for my camera. But by the time I got to the tree, the wind came up and totally distorted the perfect image that had been placed there by the sunray�s coming through the tree leaves. I waited for the wind to calm down, but by the time it did, the suns� position changed just enough for the image to not reappear. I looked at the clock to see what time it was so I possibly could see the image again the next day -- it never returned.

All day I haven�t been able to get Lily off my mind. I think of her often, and miss her deeply. We shared an incredible fourteen years and some months together. [It will be a year this November eleventh since she left us].

Some time has gone by now since Lobo�s passing. And with Lily gone too, and no more dogs at the moment, I think of her constantly. Joe and I are sitting at the kitchen-Island once again for a lunch break as Lily�s memory lay strongly on my mind. I cannot tell you why I did this, but within seconds of intense thoughts of her, I looked out at the mulberry tree. And there she was! A huge chill ran up the back of my neck as goose bumps covered my arms. I�m so thankful Joe was there once again to share another unusual occurrence. �Joe, look quickly on the trunk of the mulberry tree,� I said. �Can you believe what�s there again?� He rushed to the window, and calmly said in a subtle voice, �It�s Lily.� �Am I crazy or what?!� I asked myself. �Well, then we both are because that's Lily�s face,� Joe said. Once again I hurried for my camera. And this is what I finally captured. Evidently Lily's spirit-energy was strong enough to allow me at least four different shots of the image. Then her image started to move around with the wind, just as Lobo�s image had done. I checked the time on the clock when it appeared. I waited for the next day to possibly see her again � there was just a slight image left. Probably the average person couldn�t have made it out unless they had seen it the day before, but she was still there.

And just think; Joe and I were there both times to witness the extraordinary likenesses� of Lobo and Lily on that mulberry tree. Maybe for only a few minutes, but for both of us, I think was extremely quaint. There must be something magical about this mulberry tree, because my German Shepherd Dog, Koda now lies in the very same place as my other shepherds use to rest in the hot summer days of Arizona.

The image as we saw it on the mulberry tree, October 24, 2007. When you sit back a bit, the image becomes unmistakable.


Wasn't that incredible?  Just look at how much that image on the Mulberry tree looks like the picture of beautiful Lily! Wow, I wish I saw some of my beloved dogs that are no longer with me come visit me like that.  Well maybe......or maybe not.......it might just freak me out also, so I better be careful what I ask for!

My rating:  believing animals have souls: (4)

From the book "GHOST WHISPERS: TALES FROM HAUNTED MIDWAY".......Have you ever felt uneasy chills upon entering an old house or cemetery? Sensed someone watching you from the dark at the top of the stairs, when you knew you were alone? If so, then dim the lights and stoke up the fire. These stories will thrill and bewitch you, and unveil the hauntedness in us all. Read them and be scared... With his first book, "Ghost Whispers: Tales from Haunted Midway," local author William Gorman journeys deep into what modern master and Illinois native son Ray Bradbury called the 'October country'; that dark, unseen region where the natural and the supernatural worlds touch and sometimes bleed into each other. Only this time, it's right here in our own back yard: Rockford, Illinois, and her nearby environs. Within these pages you'll meet the ghost of a murdered girl who still wanders her former Haight Village neighborhood on rare, dread occasions; a southern-born taxidermist who lived as strangely as he died, and whose moody soul now will not rest until he finds his lost burial casket; the spirit of an old woman from Belvidere named Nellie, who donned her faded wedding dress one night and walked into the river like vapor; the vengeful phantom of an infamous Freeport assassin, who once killed a U.S. president and was hanged for his crimes; and lingering ghosts of a Rockford gone by, as three young boys take a coming-of-age midnight stroll through their fair city as it was in 1905, a burgeoning place filled with fleeting shadows and with a present already sadly becoming past. Plus many, many more. At times unsettling, at other times lyrical and life affirming, and at times just plain frightening, there's something here for everyone in this macabre collection of spooky tales. True or not, folklore or fact, strangers who visit this upper Midwest region-after reading these chilling accounts-will arrive from now on with a new appreciation of its spirited history and its somewhat haunted landscape. And local residents will never pass by and look at their own Gothic architecture or tree-shrouded graveyards in quite the same way again.

LONG AFTER THE APPLAUSE DIES DOWN

LONG AFTER THE APPLAUSE DIES DOWN
By
Barbara J. Galasso

The janitor sweeps up the floor of candy wrappers carelessly left behind. He walks up to the next roll of seats, picking up half empty cans of soda pop, an arm band is picked up, number 89 it reads and without giving much more thought to it, he throws it in the trash can. A half eaten hot dog lies neatly on a chair's arm rest like its owner might come back to claim the rest of it. An open catalog lies haphazardly on a chair with the numbers one, two, three and four circled next to strange unknown names. Moving among the seats, he notices a spray bottle on the cement floor. He picks it up and opens the cap. He thinks to himself that it smells very much like a hair conditioner. What would someone be doing with a hair condition in a sports arena he wonders? �What�s this, he mumbles to himself. Oh boy, it looks like someone left their eye glasses behind.� He picks them up and puts it in his pocket to turn it into the lost and found. It's been a long day, cleaning and polishing and making things look new again. He's tired as he reaches to turn the light switch off.

The stadium is dark as he climbs the steps that will lead him out the arena door. As he reaches for the handle, he hears a slight noise and turns to look in its direction. He hears it again and recognizes it as the echoes of people clapping and cheering, and screaming and laughing. He turns the switch back on once again and the arena is flooded with light as he takes a seat at the top of the arena and listens as the thunderous applause surrounds the stadium as it did just a few short days ago.

"Excuse me sir", someone says to him as they try to squeeze past him with popcorn and soda in their hands. A little bit of the soda falls on the janitor�s shoes and he tells the kid to watch where he�s going. �Well it�s not like I did it on purpose� the kid wise mouths him. �Kids today have no respect� he says to himself. "Over here Tony," he hears another kid say. I've found an empty seat. Excuse me mister� the kid says as he tries to squeeze himself past the old man. The janitor looks around the huge arena, and wonders why these kids can�t find another seat besides the ones next to him!

Dogs are lying in the aisles. He knows he recognizes this breed, but can't quite figure out what they call them. "Oh, yeah, they're those police dogs," he says to himself. He looks down at the middle of the arena floor and sees hundreds of police dogs in the center of the ring. He wonders what they�re all doing here. He sees dogs running around the stadium with people running after them on long leashes. He sees some lady in the middle of the ring open the dog�s mouth and is looking at its teeth. "She's a lot braver than me," he thinks to himself. "And why is she touching his private parts?" he wonders. "She's lucky he doesn't take those teeth and sink it into her leg," he chuckles to himself.

"Pardon me sir," a teenage boy says to him. "I think you're in my seat." �Go sit over there he tells him in a menacing voice. This is my seat. Got it?� This kid doesn�t answer him back and quickly takes a seat several rolls away. "Hey did somebody borrow my catalog? I want it back, someone cries out in protest. "Where the heck did I put my glasses?" a little old lady mumbles to herself as she sits down in front of the janitor as she starts to rummage through her pocketbook.

He hears the woman a few seats away from him saying to her friend, �Did you ever see such a horrible looking bitch? She has no front, her rear end is all over the place and she�s missing a couple of teeth on top of it! Her friend responds by saying, �You should see what she produces like. Her babies are just as ugly as she is!� �Wow, the janitor thinks to himself. In my time, women didn�t use such language and it was one thing talking about someone, but quite another to be talking about someone�s kids!� He decides to take another seat further down the roll away from these offending women.

He turns his attention back to the ring. The dogs are all lined up in a roll over against the wall now and standing just as proud as can be. "Wow, I like that one in the front," the janitor says to himself. I've never seen such pretty looking police dogs before." He hears someone whisper to another that they like the second dog better than the first dog and questions why the dog in 15th place is not moved up to the front of the line?

Just then the dogs start to run around the ring again, one faster than the other. He hears whistles, and bells, and chains that rattle. He sees people running around calling out names like Royce, and Lillie and running into one another. He wonders where they're all running to in such a hurry. He looks around uncomfortably to make sure there isn't a fire that�s started somewhere. He thinks maybe he should get up and investigate, but is having too much fun watching all the pretty police dogs.

Then the lady in the middle of the ring points to the dog in first place and everyone stands up on their feet to a thunderous ovation. He wonders if he should be doing the same thing only he doesn't know what he'd be clapping for. He sees bulbs flashing as a photographer takes pictures, hands congratulating one another and others walking away cursing and tearing off their arm bands. A huge trophy is brought out to the center of the ring and the dog he likes is standing next to it. He's so beautiful, that he wants to go down there and pet him.

Just then he feels a hand on his shoulder and he say's to himself, "If someone asks me to move one more time, I might not be so accommodating as I was before!� "Come on Harry, for Pete's sake," he hears a familiar voice call out his name. "If Mr. Drake sees you napping again, you're going to be fired," he hears the voice say to him. He looks up and it's his co/worker John standing above him. "I'm not napping John," he tells him. "I'm watching the police dogs. Sit down and watch them with me," he tells him. "What police dogs? John snaps. There's nobody here but you and me, you old fool. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to lock up the doors and get home tonight."

Harry looks back at the arena, and the dogs are gone. He hears the applause dying down until there is nothing left but silence. He follows John to the door, scratching his head wondering if it was really just a dream after all. Maybe John is right. Maybe he is nothing but an old fool. But it all seemed so real.

He turns one more time to look at the arena and sees the beautiful dog with the trophy standing there looking up at him and wagging his tail, but decides not to say anything more to John about it. He all ready thinks his lost his mind. When they get out to the parking lot, he yawns as the night air hits his face. He waves good bye to John as he walks over to his car. He reaches in his pocket to get his keys out and feels the cold metal of an object. He wraps his fingers around it and pulls out the eye glasses of the little old lady.

From the book: "CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE DOG LOVER'S SOUL: STORIES OF CANINE COMPANIONSHIP, COMEDY AND COURAGE".....For thousands of years, dogs have been cherished as devoted companions and exuberant playmates�their unconditional love, limitless affection and unwavering loyalty never fail to melt our hearts. The stories in Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover�s Soul truly capture the special joy these four-legged creatures bring to our lives and hearts. From exciting and entertaining accounts of courage and humor to heartwarming tales of healing and learning, each touching story in this book will inspire dog lovers to rejoice in the unique bond they share with their canine companions.

My rating: dog stories: (4)

NO PART OF THIS STORY MAY BE COPIED OR REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR!