[originally posted November 26, 2009]

People who don’t blog on a topic that’s close to their hearts and who don’t have a Twitter community that provides important information as well as consolation and celebration might not understand this post.

Then again, they likely won’t read it.

This is for those who do understand, who feel passionate about their dogs and, over the last months, who have engaged with me in conversations that have been intellectually stimulating and sometimes emotionally riveting. I am thankful today for my virtual family. They won’t be sitting down and drinking and eating with me — that’ll be my friend Rebecca, who brought Frankie into my life, and for whom I am thankful every day that I wake up to his scruffy little mug — but they are no less important for being disembodied.

Thank you for teaching me and, often, for bolstering my spirits. The life of a writer tends to be isolated. It’s hard to express how much kind words about my blog and my book have meant on days when I have despaired about my choice of profession.

Some of my best friends are cat lovers. Some of them are even petless. But dog people are a special breed, to whom I have come by a long, circuitous — and, I now see, very fortuitous — route. It’s to them that I raise my virtual glass today and give thanks.

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