looking out for those who have neither.

Whenever I think of our love for our pets I think of this.

"You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you,"

From that inner stillness, or our soul or essence or spirit, even though it's expressed in action.

I hope you, Toby, and kitty are doing well today.

Have you ever read It's All About Love by Bell Hooks? Exceptional read. In a nutshell, love is a verb, something we DO everyday for those we love, not some abstract concept.

No I haven't, but I agree so completely with your statement.

Love requires work, effort, study, and practice. Love, while felt in the most wonderful ways, in practice is choices, actions, commitment and follow through.

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."

Love is kind of like that, in that our romantic notions are rooted in childhood and I'm grateful for that seed ever being planted.

As a child, we want to experience love, as am adult, I want to practice it, or offer it, and as I wrote yesterday, the more I know you, the more capable of love I am.

Thank you for our conversation through these messages SheltieLover, the affirmation that you and so many others have offered is the very essence of love itself.

I hope today is calm and that the pain lessens with time

It feels so different this time, compared to Snuggles two plus years ago.

With Snuggles, I felt like something was unfairly taken from me.

With Cuddles, I felt that on Sunday night when the reality hit that this was bad, but it shifted almost suddenly to saying good bye and letting him go.

I know being there as he took his last breath helped, but I feel it's more than that.

We lived great together, it's like nothing was left on the table. So I'm so truly grateful that I was blessed with a day of him, much less four years.

Of course I'm terribly sad, tears flow as I write this, but they're tears of fullness, tears of joy, and tears of awareness and awe of how blessed I've been.