So, My Dog Died...

So, My Dog died. Her name was Myrtle. She was a Pembroke Corgis that Mom bought from a couple who insisted on meeting us at a Walmart in Rutledge. It was obvious that we weren't being told the truth. I told Mom to get Myrtle anyway.
The couple came clean, later and admitted that Myrtle was a rescue. It was obvious from the time I got her home she had been abused. She would flinched at any sudden movement and a raised voice would send her running for cover. She had a lot of emotional issues.

We had her for about 6 years. I owned her on my own for little more than a year.

 

She was a beautiful dog. Damaged but in the end she loved me as much as she could. It killed me to put her down. I did it for her, I did not want to live in any more fear or pain. 

I wrote this for Myrtle.

My dog has died.
I watched her slip away into sleep
released from the pains of this world
after all the tears we cried
her asleep at my bedside
how I tried to reassure her fears
over the few years
each time it stormed
our comfort conformed

Perhaps we don't really own dogs as much as we agree to share the world with them. I like to think so. Myrtle gave more to me than I feel like I gave to her. Now she's gone and I would be totally crushed if it weren't for Sophie. Sophie is also a Corgi and thank God is healthy and hardy.

 Sophie is a retired breeder from Corgi Farm in Middle Tennessee. I love her and she has quickly filled the hole that Myrtle left. We spend all day together, wherever I go, she follows and I've made her several beds so she can be comfortable until we move again. 

Still, the pain of losing Myrtle seems to hard to bear.
I shall sleep then, promises to keep. I hope that Myrtle will live on the wolf dream that I believe all dogs have as they all descended from wolves...

except for Chilwowas (they're just grown-up rats)
(kidding)

don't bite me.

Some Good News from 2021

•  The latest data on AIDS (you remember, the other global pandemic) revealed there were1.5 million new HIV infections last year, a decline of 30% since 2010, and the lowest total number since 1990.
• One of the four major flu viruses that circulate in humans looks like it might have gone extinct this year thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Yamagata virus has not been detected since April 2020 anywhere in the world. Together with the Victoria flu virus, it used to be responsible for somewhere between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths every year.
•  The WHO approved a long awaited malaria vaccine, revitalizing the fight against one of humanity’s oldest foes, as well as a new polio vaccine, which was rolled out to over 80 million children in Africa. Other achievements included the introduction of a licensed Ebola vaccine and the launch of a landmark new global plan to tackle meningitis. Liberia became the first African country to introduce the typhoid conjugate vaccine, which was given to over two million children in just weeks, and a new study revealed that the HPV vaccine has reduced cases of cervical cancer in England by nearly 90% since 2008, with over 100 countries now using it as part of a global plan to eliminate the disease.
• China successfully eliminated malaria this year (it used to have 30 million cases a year in the 1940s), as did El Salvador, the first country in Central America. Globally, 40 countries have now achieved this milestone. Côte d’Ivoire became the second African country to eliminate sleeping sickness, and The Gambia became the third African country to eliminate trachoma, an amazing achievement given that in the 1980s it was responsible for almost 1 in 5 of the country’s cases of blindness.
•  Ecologists reported that the Mississippi River is the cleanest it’s been in more than a century, with pollution down to 1% of what it was in the 1980s, while the most comprehensive survey of the Thames in 60 years found that the river, once declared biologically dead, is now “home to myriad wildlife as diverse as London itself.” The biggest river success story however, came from China, which passed a landmark environmental law protecting the Yangtze, one of the country’s two ‘mother rivers,’ banning all industrial projects, sand mining and all fishing, including in tributaries and the estuary (more than 400 million people live in the Yangtze basin).
• A comprehensive plastic ban went into effect in China in January, including items like straws, utensils, nondegradable bags and postal or courier packages, and in July, the EU banned single-use plastic plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks and cotton buds. India announced a ban on a long list of single plastics effective July 2022, the Maldives kicked off the first phase of a plan to completely eliminate single plastics by 2023, and New Zealand announced that single-use plastics would be phased out by 2025, with bans on cotton buds, packaging, cutlery, straws, and fruit labels beginning next year.
•  In July, four women in South Africa successfully overturned a set of apartheid-era marriage laws, giving around 400,000 elderly black women equal access to matrimonial property, and Uttarakhand became the first state in India to grant women co-ownership of land, in a landmark amendment that affected 350,000 girls and women overnight.
•  A new report on cluster munitions revealed that more than 110,000 landmines covering 135 km² were destroyed globally last year, a new annual record, and that over a million landmines have been cleared in the last decade.
• Incarceration rates in the United States fell to a 24 year low in 2019, plummeted a further 14% in 2020, to 1.81 million people, and then fell again in 2021, to 1.77 million. There are now half a million fewer people in prison in America compared to 13 years ago, and empty prisons are being repurposed into homeless shelters, educational farms, and even movie studios. These changes are due to incredible, uncelebrated activism, and largely unheralded changes in criminal laws, sentencing patterns and a decline in violent crimes.