August 1, 2008 – Humid, warm. We went to see Barb today, up in the Adirondacks, always a beautiful and evocative drive. Barb said she missed us, and I remembered it had been a couple of weeks since we had made it up to see her. She is tired, and she wanted to sit with Izzy for a bit, and stroke him, as many people seem to want to do. We talked, and caught up, and I felt the responsibility of hospice, which is that you never feel comfortable postponing or delaying a visit, and struggle sometimes to keep up. I was glad that Barb missed us, and also felt badly about it.
  Barb is a sweet and unfailingly generous person, and I don’t want her missing anything she needs that we can provide. Izzy is much in demand now, a different reality than at first, when the idea of a hospice dog was strange.  And I know we can’t do everything and go everywhere. But when you see what Izzy does, you want to do it, as often as  you can. Something to watch out for.

  I told Barb I was going to browbeat a poem, out of her, and I got one:

  My husband bill worked in a firehouse in Long Island,
 and it was on an air force base, and people were always moving,
 and leaving their dogs behind, and they all eventually
 made their way to the firehouse.
    And Bill really took to one, and we called him Spot, and he was a mutt,
  and he hated garbagemen, because they used to throw things at  him,
  and he would chase their trucks,
  and one day he disappeared, and was gone for days
  and we thought he was lost, and then
  a few weeks later, Bill called from the firehouse,
  and he said you’ll never guess, and I said what?
  and he said Spot is here. He made it all the way.
    And the firehouse was 45 miles from our house.