I hope Lou doesn't mind but I thought I'd do this one on my own to voice a little complaint. Don't get me wrong, he's a great dog daddy but he's been super crazed with this book thing lately and so we haven't been playing enough. Part of that was due to the recent rain (I might look tough but I really don't like the rain, windy days or when it's too hot - anything above 75 degrees) but most of it was because he's been hunched over the machine he uses to make words, pounding on the keys, cursing something called MicroSoft (he's really fond of this other thing, though, called Apple). Now that the book is up on Kindle and almost ready to be printed, he seems to be calming down and getting back to his real business, which is taking me to the dog park, the beach and the churchyard next door. There, it felt good to get that off my furry chest.
Before I go, I just had to share the coolest story about Pen Farthing, a former British Royal Marine, whose charity, NOWZAD, helped reunite adopted pets with soldiers and military contractors after they leave Afghanistan. Reuniting these dogs and cats with their soldiers takes planning worthy of covert ops, and it's expensive: Rescuing a dog can cost $3,500-$4,000, a cat, $2,500. If you're as moved by the article as we were, maybe you can make a contribution.
KABUL, Afghanistan — She was just an ordinary brown mutt, a stray, but Pvt. Conrad Lewis loved her. Lewis, a British paratrooper in Afghanistan's Helmand province, adopted the dog and named her Pegasus. Everyone called her Peg. In his letters home, Lewis described Peg as a member of his military family: "I have taught her to sit and give me her paw.... She patrols with us, she is not afraid of the Taliban or their bullets."
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| A break from the book! |
When Lewis was on Christmas leave in Britain in 2010, he told his father, Tony, that Peg was so important to him that he wanted to bring her home when he returned from his deployment. "That's your job, Dad," he said. Two months later, in February 2011, Pvt. Lewis was dead at 22, shot by a sniper.
Tony Lewis and his wife, Sandi, were determined to honor their son's wish. A friend put them in touch with Pen Farthing, a former British Royal Marine whose charity, Nowzad, helps reunite adopted pets with soldiers and contractors after they leave Afghanistan.
The parents, the charity and Conrad's fellow paratroopers hatched a plan: Peg was slipped aboard a military helicopter, then disguised as a military working dog. Afghan army soldiers were paid to deliver her to Kabul.
The Nowzad kennels in the Afghan capital nursed her back to health. Six months later, in November 2011, Peg leaped into the arms of Tony and Sandi Lewis in Claverdon, Warwickshire. "Having her here means so much to us," Tony Lewis said on Thanksgiving Day. "She is a link to Conrad's time in Afghanistan, a symbol of his sacrifice. She is something he loved, and we love her too.... She has his spirit." (read the entire article)
