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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); "><span class="ecxecxApple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; "><div> </div><div>My wonderful Vet sent this to me with a beautiful card in sympathy for Pierre. It took awhile before I could read it to the end, but I so appreciate it.</div><div><br></div><div>Drool to all in need</div><div><br></div><div>Jax</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> The Fourth Day</div><div><br></div><div>by Martin Scot Kosins</div><div><br></div><div>If you ever loved an animal, there are three days in your life you will always remember.</div><div>The first day is a day, blessed with happiness, when you bring home your young new friend.</div><div>You may have spent weeks deciding on a breed. You may have asked numerous opinions of many vets, or done long research in</div><div>finding a breeder. Or, perhaps in a fleeting moment, you may have just chosen that silly looking mutt in a shelter ... simply </div><div>because something in its eyes reached your heart.</div><div><br></div><div>But when you bring that chosen pet home, and watch it explore, and claim its special place in your hall or front room - and when you feel it brush against you for the first time - it instills a feeling of pure love you will carry with you through the many years to</div><div>come.</div><div><br></div><div>The second day will occur eight or nine or ten years later.</div><div>It will be a day like any other. Routine and unexceptional. But, for a surprising instant, you will look at your longtime friend and</div><div>see age where you once saw youth.</div><div>You will see slow deliberate steps where you once saw energy.</div><div>And you will see sleep where you once saw activity.</div><div>So you will begin to adjust your friend's diet - and you may add a pill or two to her food.</div><div>And you may feel a growing deep fear within yourself, which bodes of a coming emptiness.</div><div>And you will feel this uneasy feeling, on and off, until the third day finally arrives.</div><div>And on this day - if your friend and God have not decided it for you, then you will be faced with making a decision of your own -</div><div>on behalf of your lifelong friend, and with the guidance of your own deepest Spirit.</div><div>But whichever way your friend eventually leaves you - you will feel as alone as a single star in the dark night sky.</div><div><br></div><div>If you are wise, you will let the tears flow as freely and as often as they must. And if you are typical, you will find that not many</div><div>in your circle of family or human friends will be able to understand your grief, or comfort you.</div><div>But if you are true to the love of the pet you cherished through the many joy filled years, you may find that a soul - a bit smaller in size than your own - seems to walk with you, at times, during the lonely days to come.</div><div>And at moments when you least expect anything out of the ordinary to happen, you may feel something brush against your leg - very, very lightly.</div><div>You will both reject it and embrace it, and it may confuse you.</div><div>If you reject it, it will depress you.</div><div>If you embrace it, it will deepen you.</div><div>Either way, it will still be an ache.</div><div>But there will be, I assure you, a fourth day when - along with the memory of your pet - and piercing through the heaviness in</div><div>your heart - there will come a realization that belongs only to you.</div><div>It will be as unique and strong as our relationship with each animal we have loved, and lost.</div><div>This realization takes to form of a Living Love -</div><div>It is the legacy our pets leave us when they go -</div><div>And it is a gift we may keep with us as long as we live.</div><div>It is a Love which is ours alone -</div><div>And until we ourselves leave, perhaps to join our Beloved Pets -</div><div>It is a Love that we will <i style="font-style: italic; ">always</i> possess.</div></span><br></span> <br /><hr />New Windows 7: Find the right PC for you. <a href='http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pc-scout/default.aspx?CBID=wl&ocid=PID24727::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WWL_WIN_pcscout:102009' target='_new'>Learn more.</a></body>
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