September 30, 2007 – Robertson Davies, the late Canadian novelist, has always been one of my favorite writers, and he often wrote of the times when The Black Dog came and sat beside him. These visits, he said, brought onsets of great gloom and depression,  and he would wait, sometimes for days and weeks for the Black Dog to leave  him.
  There was nothing he could do, he wrote, but wait. This was appropriate because a friend’s wife called over the weekend and told me that my friend, beset by a sudden and painful illness, had taken his life.I was, of course, surprised by this, perhaps because as a hospice volunteer I see people facing death differently. Uncharacteristically, the farm seemed gloomy, still. Animals live above and beyond these human dramas, moving along with life in their accepting and adaptable ways.
   This morning, well after this message about David, I went to visit  friends and Lab breeders Gretchen Pinkel and John Keeler, Jr. in Argyle, N.Y. Even without their new Lab puppies – is there anything on the earth more appealing than a Lab puppy?, time with John and Gretchen, two courteous and gracious people, is special. I’ve visited them several times in the last couple of years, and their love of dogs and breeding has always reminded me why finding a devoted and caring breeder is one of the great ways to get a dog.
  They are always wonderful to visit. It is always nice to see them smile as they recount their conscientious breeding programs and dramas with litters and dogs. They pull out camping chairs, and we sit next to puppies running around and being goofy. Labs are, along with border collies, my favorite breed, the one great because they are smart, the other wonderful because they are sometimes not.
  I drink coffee and eat freshly  baked corn muffins and we take in the hills and marshes and talk about dogs (their kennel is called Kee-Pin Labs). So there, on this beautiful fall morning, I visited with another Black Dog, a seven week old Lab puppy that I dubbed (with the help of a friend named Cail) Lenore, after the Poe poem. I am helping to socialize her. She is a deep soul, I think, happy to gnaw on my nose, and reflect on life as it passes before her.
   It is dangerous to name a puppy, but I have enough animals and other things going right now and am not really looking for another dog. I am dropping by tomorrow to visit Lenore and perhaps take her picture. Izzy came with me this morning. He has never, to my knowledge, seen a puppy, as he spent years of his life alone on a farm. He snarled at them, and hid under my car. I thought all day of these two Black Dogs, both of which have entered my imagination and my life in odd and disparate ways.
  They each typify different elements of life, both important, and each highlighting the other.