canine coda...

This week, I temporarily left the familiarity of the Executive branch, and began a one-year detail with a Congressional Committee. Monday morning, I arrived early. The offices were empty, so I sat on the couch in the reception area, and waited. A few minutes later, a woman walked towards me, a three-legged dog trailing behind her. She walked by and offered a friendly greeting soaked in Midwestern sincerity, "Good Morning." Then her three-legged companion surprised me. He walked up to me and placed his muzzle next to my lap, gently nudging my hand away from the copy of the New York Times.

Each morning, he arrives at the office with his owner, Lisa, a veterinarian by training. Most of the day, he lays on a dark blanket near her desk. They go for their daily walk. I walk by her desk, and she is on the floor massaging his back, and his legs, and his snout. Their contact is framed by an unsettling empathy, as well as a discomforting urgency. I learned quite a bit about Trooper this week. Along with a remarkable personality and uncanny sociability, Trooper also has terminal cancer. He may endure for a few more weeks, or a few more months. Lisa told me that she will be a mess when he "goes," as she phrased it. Lisa and I traded stories, anecdotes, dramas, tales and narratives...all sewn together with the thread of cancer-tinged experiences.

I offered to take pictures of Trooper during one of their daily walks. Lisa then mentioned that she had hundreds of pictures of Trooper, taken by her boyfriend with his digital camera. I asked if she would share some of those pictures with me, and she did. These two are my favorites, and were taken a few years ago according to the data encoded in the images. The artistic quality of the photographs pales in comparison to Trooper's character...a compliment to both the photographer and his subject.