We sat there in the quiet hour before dusk. Snow was lightly falling outside. A fire crackled in the nearby wood stove. My two dogs were curled up at our feet, totally unaware of both the peace and turmoil drifting through the dimly-lit den as we faced each other.

I sat there at peace.

Jon sat there in turmoil.

I calmly reflected on my day of getting unruly kids to school. My truancy tracking program often took the wind out of my sails, and it was moments like this that I cherished.

Jon worriedly reflected on what his doctor discovered during a recent check up. At 14, he wasn’t prepared for the diagnosis.

“I have it,” Jon solemnly said.

I held my breath for that next ten seconds, slowly letting it  out until my lungs were as empty as his dark eyes.

“You told me,” Jon said, “that I couldn’t keep messing around. You told me to at least be safe.”

I sat silent, waiting for him to continue.

“Usually,” Jon said, “positive stands for something good. But in this case, testing positive stands for just the opposite. But that is what my doctor said. HIV. Positive.”

I sat there, a little disconnected. It was like one of those frozen moments in time when the all-too-real springs up into your face and you find it difficult to recover from the blow that sent you reeling.

Jon shrugged, seemingly unaffected by the looming disaster that would take him out of this world in the near or distant future. “My doctor said I had five years at the most.”

To hear a 14-year-old gay boy talk about the end of his life was unsettling.

“I,” he continued, “don’t even know who burned me. I had so many unsafe encounters that I have no clue who it might have been. I mean, I have been racking my brain trying to figure out who might have been a carrier, but what difference does that make now? I can’t help thinking about all the others I might have infected. I imagine it might make a big difference to them to know that someone they had sex with might have burned them, too.”

I nodded, wondering if he even remembered how many kids and adults would be on that list. I knew Jon had been selling himself down at the Loop, in front of our State Capitol, for the past two years. Kids were his main partners, but he had many adult partners, as well.

Jon identified early on and had been sexually active since he was 6. He had experimented with many male partners before he was even 12, and when he reached puberty, he was already addicted to sexual activity.

The caseworker who called me to work with Jon informed me, “Jon has problems with his sexual preferences.”

On our first meeting, Jon hopped in my truck carrying a large purse. He was just 13 then and he was adamant that “preference” was definitely not the right word.

Jon told me it was his “orientation” to be gay. He told me “preference” indicated he had “chosen” this lifestyle or that he “preferred” being gay. Jon swore to me that this was not the case. Orientation meant that he was born this way and there was no preferring or choosing involved. As Jon said to me, “A dog is a dog. A cat is a cat. A dog cannot prefer to be a cat.”

Simple explanation, and as I got to know him better, I understood what he meant.

During that first meeting, Jon pulled a black dress out of his purse, panty hose, a bra, and a couple of hefty dish rags.

Trying to remain open-minded, I asked, “What are the dish rags for?”

Jon laughed. “Don’t you know anything? I am going dancing tonight and the dish rags are to stuff my bra with.”

I flippantly asked, “Why not just use tennis balls?”

Jon laughed, “That’s actually hilarious! That’s why I like you. You don’t know anything, do you? If I use tennis balls and I rub up against my partner, he will think I am aroused already! Dish rags are more subtle! You do not want your partner to think you are turned on before you even start to dance!”

Enlightened, I grinned and said, “God forbid.”

That next day, Jon went to school, walked into the girl’s rest-room, and put on his dress. He got in trouble for  interrupting classes by parading up and down the halls. He also got into trouble after school, when several bullies tracked him down and lit his hair on fire. The hair spray he wore did not help the situation, and fortunately someone had the good sense to pour pop on Jon’s head to extinguish the flames.

At this point, his casework asked me to take Jon each Tuesday evening to the only support group for gay kids in the city. This was in 1989, and the support group met in a gay bar on O Street, the main drag of our capitol city. I was to remain discreet about these meetings as the caseworker knew if the public ever found out I was transporting a 13-year-old gay boy to a gay bar for his weekly support meeting, there would be hell to pay.

Unfortunately, Jon’s attendance of this support group was short-lived. His support group leader was a young gay man who called me one night after two months of Jon attending group. He was frustrated because no matter what he tried to do to persuade Jon to stop pursuing him as a sexual partner, Jon continued to come onto him. Jon liked guys with beards.

So with that not working out so well, I tried to include Jon on fishing trips and skateboarding ventures with some of my hard-core delinquents, but Jon’s mannerism’s and his arrogant attitude did not win him a popularity contest with them.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came when one day five of my at-risk  kids were painting my house. It was a scene right out of Tom Sawyer, with five tough, street-wise delinquents dabbing at my house with paint brushes. When Jon showed up there on his bike, the other five kids reluctantly let him join them.

Things were going good, too, until Jon lipped off to one of them, and in running to avoid an ass-kicking, he slipped and fell and cut his knee on a board. When I brought him a wet wash cloth to clean his bloody knee, one of the boys said, “Destroy that rag when he’s done or you might get AIDS!”

“Screw you!” Jon responded.

“No,” the other kid said, “you would like it too much!”

And it all went down hill from there.

Soon after that, Jon was booted out of his home and his caseworker was scrambling to find him a placement. Two gay men agreed to take Jon and even went through the foster care training, but the powers that be would not approve as they thought it would lead to a sexual abuse situation.

So Jon was moved into the home of a 66-year-old Grand-mother-type who would not allow him to come in her front door. She insisted instead that Jon use her backdoor for fear of what her neighbors would say about her having a gay youth as a resident. She also once slapped him on the hands with a ruler for getting milk out of the kitchen fridge.

I often wondered if placing Jon in the home of those two gay guys would have given him the type of support he needed. Because Grandma Jones sure wasn’t the right placement for a sexually active gay boy like Jon.

One day, when picking him up for school, I noticed bruising around his neck. When I asked him about it, Jon openly admitted he’d had an S and M session with a partner the night before. And choking him out was part of the session.

Several weeks later, Jon called me in the middle of the night to tell me of one of his sexual experiences with an older man. At 2AM, I was less receptive then he wanted me to be, and so he let me have it with telling me he’d been selling himself to boys and men on the Loop for the past year. He also told me he had been barebacking (no condoms), and that this relationship with this older man meant more to him than all his fooling around. He insisted that I at least understood the purpose of his call. To let me know that even though everyone in society condemned sex between men and boys, that this was one experience that wasn’t just about the sex.

I continued for the next several months to play cat and mouse with Jon, trying to steer him away from the Loop, but by then, I honestly think he was addicted to the sex.

One evening he came over to the house. He had a Michael Jackson tape with him and asked me if he could place it my tape machine and dance for me. I laughed at the absurdity of  Jon doing the moon walk in my living room.

After I told him no, Jon went off to my den. Michael Jackson was soon blaring from the back den and my two dogs came scrambling through the kitchen and into the front room to avoid getting their sensitive ears blasted with Billy Jean and Thriller.

When Jon was done dancing, he came back out to the living room where I was watching a movie. He plopped himself down in front of me and promptly said, “I am ready to do you now!”

Awkward! echoed through my mind. Unbelievable! Bizarre!  Definitely skating on thin, black ice. Time for Jon to go home and take a cold shower!

And that’s exactly what I told him.

Ironically, the next day, his caseworker called me and asked me if I would consider taking Jon for a foster placement. He told me that his time with Grandma Jones had come to an end, and he thought my home might be a better solution. He offered me $3,000 per month.

Now that was unheard of in those days.

My last foster placement was a special needs kid who netted me $1,400 per month, but that was because he came straight to my home from the group home he trashed in a psychotic rage.  The kid had taken a shovel to all 19 windows in the house, on the coldest day of the winter, and on a weekend no less. It cost an astronomical fee to replace all those windows. So therefore, the caseworker set my payment extremely high to cover the cost of any damage the kid might do to my home. Fortunately, I only had one violent incident with the kid and it never involved a shovel and my windows. But I digress.

While I was slightly tempted at Jon’s caseworker’s offer of three grand per month, I shared with him the incident of the night before, and went on to say that I did not think I could continue to work with Jon. I told him that gay support leader had been right: Jon liked guys with beards.

The caseworker was disappointed that I did not accept his offer, but he did persuade me to continue working with Jon.

He set me up , too, pointing out all my many successes with many other state wards. At that point in time, I was the only truancy tracker in the city. And though it took me a long two years to consistently get 60-some delinquent kids to school, to court, to treatment, and to remain in their homes, by that third year, I had a proven track record.

I was ahead of my time, too, with a vision fulfilled. My caseworkers agreed with my plan to pay their wards $1 per day to go to school. They also agreed with my “skip days,” or as they became known, “mental health days,” in which if a kid had gone to school for 30 days straight, I rewarded them by allowing them to skip a day. I spent that day with them on a one-on-one basis, taking them to MacDonald’s, to a movie or out to skate or on a canoe trip down the Platte.

At first, kids dreaded to see me coming in the mornings. I  not only woke them up with my motorized squirt pistol in hand, but I escorted them to school.

They also hated the fact that if they skipped once I got them there, their administrator had my pager number and they would not hesitate to call me and send me on the hunt for them.

Those kids did not ever appear in court again with a 3-month truancy problem. They did not have a chance to continue skipping, not when I networked with their caseworkers, probation officers, parents, and school staff.

It was magic. And it worked.

So the caseworker used my proven history with kids to convince me to continue trying to work my magic on Jon.

Jon continued to sell himself on the Loop.

And therefore, ended up in my den, telling me that he had tested positive for HIV.

His doctor had been right: Jon lived another five years before he died of AIDS complications at the age of 19.

The book that follows was written in memory of him.

He had tears in his eyes the day he snitched on his brother. Two days earlier, his older brother had pulled out a .22 pistol, placed one bullet in the cylinder, spun it, and then pointed it directly at eight-year-old Shawn. 13-year-old Steven then pulled the trigger.

The hammer fell on an empty chamber, and so Steven spun the cylinder again and aimed the pistol at ten-year-old brother, Jack. He thumbed back the hammer and pulled the trigger. And again, the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Relishing the terror he was inspiring in his two younger brothers, Steven pulled the trigger a third time. Fortunately, he flinched when it fired and the bullet passed above Jack’s head and embedded in the wall above him. Steven simply laughed and walked away, leaving his two younger brothers quite shaken.

I was just two years into my truancy program and as a private contractor with the State, I knew I was obligated to report this incident. My job then was to do wake-up calls on some of the most difficult, counter-cultural kids in the city. By the time I saw any of these kids, they had been to countless meetings at school and hearings at court, and had been made wards of the state.

In my line of work, I connected with caseworkers, probation officers, teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents, and the good Judge Nuernberger, who gave these kids chance after chance before he sentenced them to more restrictive placements. My job was to keep these kids in school, and during each work day, I had many highly volatile time-bombs placed in my path. Each one, an accident waiting to happen. Such was the case with the three brothers, Steven, Shawn, and Jack.

As it turned out, my report resulted in Shawn and Jack being removed from their home. They were sent to live with their dad down in small town Crete, Nebraska. The two brothers blamed me then for ruining their lives and for them being stuck in another bad environment. I even got blamed for the machete fight they had on their dad’s farm, and the finger that Shawn lost to Jack’s wild swing of the sharp blade. Yes, they blamed me for the sucky turn their lives took. But despite the blame game, both boys took with them to Crete my manuscript they had been test reading. The work was a tattered, spiral-bound booklet named, Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball.

Shawn and Jack introduced the manuscript to their mentor, Professor Beef Torrey, and a year later, when 8-Ball was published by an educational publisher, the boys carried their own autographed copies into class and shared them with Beef.

Two years later, while shopping at Nebraska bookstore, I noticed a long-haired David Crosby look-alike staring at me from down the aisle. While conscious of his close scrutiny, I continued to check out books. Suddenly, the guy excitedly declared, “Far out, man, you’re Tom Frye!”

Jarred by such usage of hippy jargon, I turned as the hairy fellow approached me. He was beaming and amused that he’d finally met the author of the book he had come to love due to my two former state wards who had ended up in his classroom in small town Crete. “My name is Beef!” he said. “Professor Beef Torrey of Crete! And I read the manuscript of 8-Ball long before it was published! Congratulations! You’ve written one helluva book, Tom!”

Beef then explained his connection to Shawn and Jack, and I stood there amazed to think how two little kids from Havelock had carried that manuscript with them to Crete and placed it in Beef’s hands. Over the years, Beef has passed my books on to countless students he crosses paths with. This past summer, 30 years after that fateful meeting with that “far out” dude, Beef and a colleague had a biography of Hunter S. Thompson published.

I was talking about that very book with a mother who had bought all 3 of my Havelock series books in early June, and this mother stood there open-mouthed as I mentioned Beef. She said, “That is who first introduced me to your books when I was in elementary school in Crete! Beef Torrey! And now I am reading them to my own kids!”

I recently received an email from her son, who told me he was sharing the books with a friend at Norris High school, and shortly thereafter, this same kid sent me a Friend request on Facebook.

So that is what this book-writing has been all about: Connections.

One boy who had grown up on the mean streets of Havelock ended up serving in the Gulf War. While stationed over there in the desert sands, one of his fellow soldiers asked him where he’d been born and raised. When the kid told him he came from Havelock, the amazed  solider ran to his backpack and pulled out a copy of Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball. Later, after the Havelock boy made it safely home, he told me he’d never read 8-Ball while growing up, but said he read it over there during the Gulf War, and he bawled his eyes out because it reminded him of home.

I once read on the Internet where a used copy of 8-Ball was selling in Afghanistan for $38. The oddest thing is, it had been signed by me! I could only wonder, “How in the hell did my book get over there to that country? And signed by me, no less!”

Over the years, I have received letters from kids confined to institutions and kids going through treatment. The most profound letter came from a 15-year-old kid living in a group home. He wrote to tell me he’d had just finished reading 8-Ball, and he claimed the book made him cry. He went onto say, “I haven’t cried like that since me and my girlfriend lost our baby a year ago. If you haven’t reached a million kids with your books by now, you definitely will one day! Just imagine, a million kids touched by the words you write. I just wanted to thank you for writing a book that changed my life.”

Shortly thereafter, I met a kid down at Havelock Park. He said, “Man, with all those books you sold, how come you still live in the sticks of Havelock? I saw on the Internet that 2.8 million copies of 8-Ball have been sold over the years!”

I simply laughed and figured he must have made the mistake of reading the caption above Amazon.com when doing a search for my books, because if 2.8 million copies of my book had been sold, I think I would certainly know about it. No, in reality, I figured 12,000 copies of 8-Ball have been printed. Someone once estimated that for every one book printed at least 5 people have read it. So if that is true, perhaps as many as 60,000 people have read my one book. But that does not a rich author make. Of all those books, I have probably given away over half of them. That’s just the way I roll.

Most recently, I finished writing a screenplay based on 8-Ball. Only 15 copies had been floating around out there for less than 3 weeks before I received an email from a movie producer out of New York. I promptly sent him a copy of the book per his request and I am now waiting to see what the outcome of this contact will result in.

Two days after firing off a book/script packet to this producer, I got an email from a reporter at 10/11 News. He claimed he was doing a piece on the unsolved murder of Patricia Webb, which my book is loosely based on. He also claimed my book is listed on the Internet along with other facts about Patty Webb the young female police informant who was shot and killed outside of Lincoln.

I thought it quiet strange that this reporter chose now of all times to look into this unsolved murder after 35 years. At his request to speak with me to get my take on her murder, I said, “Have you heard the old saying, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie?’ Well, right now my dog is sleeping peacefully.” I then added, “Unless you have something to say that piques my interest, I guess I remain skeptical and shall remain silent about Patty’s murder.”

So once again, connections that lead to connections.

But lest I get too heady about my accomplishments with my books, I will end this piece with a story that keeps me in my place and helps me to remain grounded and humble.

Denny Ladue, owner of the Used Bike Shop in Bethany, recently portrayed Detective Shepherd in my play based on 8-Ball. Talk about connections. One day, while reading over his lines about a private investigator named Quinn, who put a hit on an informant named Kelly, Denny received a phone call from a lady named Quinn Kelly!

After sharing this particular story he then told me two stories regarding my 8-Ball book. In the first one, he said, “My daughter first read your book when she was just a little girl enrolled at Saint Catherine’s school in Riverside, California.”

This amazed me to think that my book had found it’s way into a fourth grader’s hands at a Catholic school all the way in Callie. But Denny then shared his last story with me in regards to my book.

“And I came across another copy of your book when I first moved back here from California,” Denny said, smirking. “Do you know where I found it? At East High in a dumpster!”

Last year, after helping 14-year-old Kody Connick publish his book, Wild Hearts, I received 2,676 hits on my website in one day. The Dogmen, who actually fight dogs, wanted to ban the book and burn my site as they were angry that a kid put them in their place. Animal Control Officers and Rescue Workers wrote in to support the book. The story revolved around a young delinquent named Charlie, who befriends a Pitbull named King. The book about anti-dogfighting traveled as far as South Korea and Japan, and we sold copies in 19 different states. Kody’s book struck a nerve.

Shortly thereafter, I read a tragic story about 500,000 dogs who were shot and killed over in Iraq. They were feral dogs and the military leaders from the US determined they were a nuisance and had to be put down. Two days after reading this story I had a dream where I saw the ghostly souls of all 500,000 dogs seated on a shoreline, gazing out to sea. When I followed their steady gazes, I saw a large ship sailing toward them to pick them. Once all the dogs were aboard, the ship sailed away on a river of stars. The next day, I began work on a sequel to Wild Hearts, entitled, Do Dogs have Souls?

I guess it begs the question, do they? Think of all the dogs who have passed through your life, and perhaps the dog in your life currently, and you decide.

My first dog, Sandy, was a Shepherd/Collie, and she and I landed on the front page of the Journal and Star when I was five years old with Sandy pulling me across the snow-covered front lawn in my snow boat. She was a part of my life until I turned 14.  I was not there to see her off as I had run away from home and was soon to be locked up in the detention center. But all through those troubled times, I thought of her and how much she was going to be missed. It was a crossroads for both Sandy and I, for I went on to climb my way up out of the juvenile justice system while she went on to the beyond.

Two years later, I ended up with a St. Bernard puppy named Angel, who became notorious for   boxing the neighbor’s German shepherd and sending him rolling with each strike. But for all her rough and tumble ways, she was a gentle dog who readily adopted the small, black and white terrier I brought home one day from my work as a teacher’s assistant at Havelock Elementary school.

I had spotted the small, furry-faced terrier seated on the edge of the playground watching my students play with his one good eye. His other eye was matted shut, and although he looked like a forlorn little guy, there was not much I could do for him. When I went to leave school that day, I discovered that three of my students had scooped up the ratty little terrier and placed him inside my 59 Step-van. When I opened the sliding door, there sat the one-eyed dog, peering up at me and wagging his tail.

I took him home, and Angel immediately adopted him. I named him Christian. Those two dogs, one big and massive, the other small and scrawny, were inseparable. In the winter time, Christian would climb up on Angel’s broad back when she was laying in the snow. There, he would curl up, staying warm until I let them both inside. Once inside, Christian would resume his place when Angel planted herself at her favorite location near the front door.

Then came Misty, a sleek, fox-like Collie/Terrier. She was a beautiful rich brown dog with pointed ears. Misty, unlike the big moose Angel and the short-legged Christian, went along with me on camping trips. She was more rugged than the pampered and spoiled Angel and Christian, and she loved romping in the woods.

My most memorable time with Misty was the time my foster son, Chad, and I skied deep into Indian Caves in the middle of the winter. We pulled a sled with our gear stashed on it, and Misty rode on this most of the trip into the park. We camped in an Adirondack shelter, nailing blankets over the opening in the front, and warmed the shelter with a propane space heater. Misty kept me warm that night by curling up inside my sleeping bag. She was a great dog.

Those three dogs were inseparable up until Angel passed at 14, Misty at 15, and Christian lived until he was 17. A long time for most dogs.

My parents then adopted, Brandy, a wet-mouth St. Bernard. Brandy would latch onto the cuff of your pants and drag you anywhere she wanted you to go. The night that the drug-crazed Terry Reynold’s broke into my parents’ motel, Brandy high-tailed it to the back room, while my dad used a gun to scare the crazed psycho out of their kitchen window. When the cops showed up to investigate the mess that Reynold’s had made, only then did Brandy come out of the bedroom to give the officers a friendly greeting as if to say, “Gosh, sure glad you guys showed up.”

I was there at my parents’ place when Brandy breathed her last breath, and I remember it was a peaceful passing, no vets involved, no needles, just a sprawl on her side and some labored breathing, and then she was gone.

By then, I had discovered the Pet Cemetery out east of town and I began burying my dogs there. I made trade-offs with Patricia, the owner, as I wrote two universal poems regarding both dogs and cats, where the poem could be printed with the name of the animal at the top and therefore apply to anyone’s pet. You can read it at the end of this post.

At 26, a year after my first book, Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball, was published, I bought a house in Havelock and started my work in foster care. Over the next few years I took in nine different troubled kids and five different affectionate dogs.

Bummer, my Dobie/Shepherd, was the biggest baby of all of my dogs. Doberman’s have poor circulation, and in the winter time when Bummer wasn’t curled up beside either of my two woodstoves, she was burrowed beneath the covers in someone’s bed. And when she went outside, she looked like a damned chimpanzee as my one kid used to dress her up in a sweatshirt  and a pair of colored underwear with Bummer’s stubby tail sticking up through the pee hole.

Bummer once swallowed a baby possum, and while I was outside cutting wood, she vomited the dead thing up in front of Henry, my very startled new foster placement. Henry came running outside of the house, screaming, “Your damned dog just had a baby out of her damned mouth!”

Sam, my Keeshond, was by far the most intelligent dog I’d ever had. She was one dog that I didn’t even have to leash as she would walk twenty feet in front of me, glance back to make sure I was coming, then trot back if I patted my side. She was magically bonded, and I took Sam out to Wilderness Park quite often to walk her. Sam also was great in a canoe and would remain perfectly still while cruising down through Wilderness or the Platte River.

Smoky, my German shepherd, was a misfit, and although I had a six foot high stockade fence around my backyard, she could leap it like a frog. She was an escape artist. So I used to chain her up to a concrete block in the middle of the yard. Fortunately for Smoky, my foster son and I returned home to pick up something we’d forgotten one day, only to find that Smoky had drug her block across the backyard and leaped over the fence, where she was dangling by the chain around her neck and her back feet barely touching the ground. I released her and put her inside the house, relieved that she hadn’t died of strangulation.

Tragedy struck Bummer at five years of age, for my neighbor man, a guard at the city jail, had this thing about standing on my front walk and getting Sam to bark at him. He antagonized her, and therefore thought he was justified in throwing a piece of poisoned meat in my yard. Sam did not get to it, but Bummer did.

My foster son, Trent, and I watched her die right there in front of us. I later had an autopsy performed and my vet determined it was strychnine that had passed through her system. I called the police and animal control, but they could do nothing without proof. I then went over and confronted the neighbor moron, but he simply cussed me out and slammed the door in my face.

That was the closest I had ever come to going to prison. But I kept my pistol in my drawer, and buried Bummer out at the Pet Cemetery beside Angel and Christian.

A month later, I adopted a Husky pup, Crystal. She was a pure white, blue-eyed beautiful dog. Unfortunately, she only lived for four months as she had a brain tumor and after spending $2,000 on trying to keep her alive, I finally had to put her to sleep. She was buried next to Bummer.

And then new neighbors moved into the moron’s house, and they had a black Chow/Husky mix named Sheera. One day while coming home with my kid, we witnessed the big, burly biker neighbor beating on the poor dog. I ran over and immediately confronted the surly bear of a man, and in response, he picked up the dog and heaved her over the fence at me, saying, “If you think you can take care of her any better than I did, you can have the damned bitch!”

I caught her and carried her home, without even glancing back at the moron. I kept her for 14 years after that. She was probably the closest dog to me I ever had, bonding with me and empathetic to my every mood. She would come and stand in front of me whenever I was angry or sad. She would curl up beside, placing her head on my chest whenever I laid down in bed.

The bad thing was, Sheera and Sam were both dominant females, and for nearly eight years I had to keep them separated or they would fight to the death. The worst fight they ever had took place one night in the middle of my livingroom. I made the mistake of getting in front of them instead of taking one dog from behind. Sam lunged forward and bit me deeply on my forearm.

Later, once I had both dogs separated in different rooms, I walked into the bathroom to examine my dog bite. It was so deep it appeared there was a white tooth embedded in my arm. I fainted and fell on the bathroom floor.

When I came to, my foster son, Ricky, was leaning over me, concern on his face. He had been outside on his skateboard ramp when the dog fight took place, so he knew nothing of the whirlwind I had waded into earlier. I had just clambered from the floor to the toilet seat, when Ricky took a long look at my bloody wound and gasped, “Oh my God, it’s a tooth!”

I fainted again. When I woke up, Ricky was showing three of his skater buddies my bloody wound and all of them were marveling that I had a dog tooth embedded in my arm. Come to find out, it was a bone in my arm that was visible beneath the three layers Sam had bitten through and not her tooth after all, but it was still totally gross.

The next day I was filming an anti-drug program in combination with kids from Malcolm and kids from Whitehall at NETV. During a lunch break from the interviews these kids were conducting with me, I slipped home to let the dogs out. And Sam and Sheera got into it again. I had to wade into the fray and break them up. While doing so, I tore open the wound that Sam had inflicted the night before, and it bled all over my purple shirt I was wearing. In my haste to get back to the studio to resume filming, I did not notice the blood splatters on my shirt.

Later, while reviewing the taping, one student asked, “What are those bright red spots on your  shirt?”

“Good Lord,” I said, “that is blood from a dog fight I had to break up yesterday!”

The producer jokingly said, “Now we are going to have to give this film an R rating for blood and excessive gore!”

Sam passed at 14, Smoky at 10, and Sheera lived until she was 15. After burying Sheera, I vowed I would never take in another dog again.

But then came Kody’s book, and we needed a Pitbull pup to photograph as a model for the back of the book. We drove out to the Human Society and found a tiny Pit/Lab mix. While snapping off pictures of her, Kody began begging me to adopt the female pup, promising me he would walk her, train her, clean up after her, and she would essentially become his dog. Famous last words, right?

Jade came home with me. Her photo traveled all over the country on the back of the Wild Hearts book and she got to be on the front page of the Journal and Star with Kody in a full-color spread. But since that time, I have had to replace seven pillows, one vacuum sweeper cord, one Nintendo cord, two gloves, a dozen socks, and at least three bath towels. My couch looks like it belongs on the front porch of trailer situated in some backwoods setting as two cushions have been gnawed as well as both arms.

When walking down the bike trail, people ask me, “Oh, what kind of dog is that?”

And I reply, “Part Pitbull and all Meth Lab!”

Most get the joke, but one lady went on her way, saying, “Meth Lab? Never heard of that breed before. How odd.”

So as I contemplate whether or not to finish my story, Do Dogs have Souls, I wonder how many people believe they do.

Heaven will not be as I pictured it, if I get there and find that all of my past dogs are not there to greet me as I step through my cottage door. I have pictured that cottage nestled in a pine forest  over and over in my mind for a long time now. And each time life here gets really hard, I cope by visualizing each of my dogs sprawled beside a fire inside that cottage. So if I open that door at road’s end and discover my dogs are not there, I am going to march right up to God and ask him why he didn’t allow them in.

Presumptuous? Arrogant? Rude? To bring God to task on the matter regarding my dogs? I don’t think so. He will know I am not stepping out of line, for dogs have been the emotional buffer I have needed to help me with each of the troubled kids who have passed through my life, and God will totally understand when I ask, “Just where are my soul companions?”

And I would hope he’d say, “Ah, I was saving the best for last. You didn’t look out in the field behind your back door, did you? For there you will find all of your dogs chasing crystal rabbits through a field of stars. Just call them back, for they will know your voice.”

And then to show God that there are no hard feelings for causing me concern over the souls of my dogs, I will share with him the joke about all the dyslexic people in the world who actually believe in Dog. He will get a good laugh out of that, I am sure.

So as you, my faithful reader, contemplate whether or not your own dogs ever had souls, I will leave you with this poem, and then I think I will get to work on that book once more.

The Lord looked down from heaven,

a puppy in his hand.

He said, “I’m sending you to earth,

an often troubled land.

“Your presence will bring comfort,

to ones I love so dear.

When you snuggle up beside them,

they’ll know that I am near.

“I know it’s quite a mission,

for a tiny pup to do.

But I’ll be in your heart,

my love will flow through you.

“You’ll whine, bark and sniff,

you’ll cuddle and you’ll play.

You’ll be a ray of sunshine,

on dark and dreary days.

“You’ll share that thought-filled stare,

that dogs are noted for.

You’ll wag your tail and smile,

greeting loved ones at the door.

“You’ll be a most welcome sight,

at the end of weary days.

You’ll grow from pup to dog,

sharing yourself through each phase.

“And when the day draws near,

that I retrieve my precious loan,

you’ll leave the world a better place,

through you, my love will have brightly shone.

“For those who cared so dearly,

and gave you love so free,

will know you were an example,

of the love that comes from Me.”