I got up at 4 a.m. this morning with Red to work on my book “Talking To Animals.” Saturday, Maria and I head off to Cape Cod for a five-day vacation, I have to say we have never needed one more. I always have mixed feelings going away – I am leaving my computer home, you will have a respite from me, my life and thoughts for a few days, and I hope to read a dozen books, walk a hundred miles with Maria, take some good photos to share with you.

For the first time, I’m renting a lens for my camera, I’ve rented a 14 mm wide angle, a lens I don’t really need most of the time, but will be perfect for the sand dunes and oceanscapes of the Cape. A new way of thinking for me, instead of trying to buy a $2,300 lens, which I can’t afford, I can have one for two weeks for a fraction of that and send it back when I am done. Hmmm. We’ll see how this goes.

I’m bringing my camera and some books, not much else. Walking, loving, photos, eating, reading. My vacation plans, perhaps a whale watch, Maria would love to see a whale. I’ve bot a satchel full of pills and vials, I am a walking pharmacy for the next few months.

We do not worry about leaving the animals and neither Maria nor I has any need of taking dogs with us on vacation. Our friend and house-sitter Deb Foster will move into the farmhouse, the animals will be spoiled, cuddled, walked and cosseted for days, they do not seem to notice when we leave or are gone. The other day Deb showed up with a basket full of sliced apples (God forbid the animals would have to chew on a whole apple) and handed them out to the donkeys and sheep. Everybody got something.

Red nearly melts into the ground when Deb is around, and Frieda now lets Deb rub her belly, an absolute first for anyone but me and Mara. We do not think much about the animals when we are gone, we need a vacation from one another. I love writing on the blog, and I miss it when I am away, but I need a break from it, I need to gain some perspective, think about things, get some distance from my life.

I am reluctant this year to leave off writing about the carriage horses in New York, they and the drivers need some attention right now, but the campaign against them seems stalled once again as the mayor and his colleagues in the animal rights movement are hiring consultants, marketers and PR specialists and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a frantic campaign to get the City Council to ban the carriage trade. I am not a political insider in New York, but I have a sense this campaign isn’t working, if the mayor had the votes he would have introduced the ban.

Since it makes little sense and is almost completely unjustified, it is not really all that surprising that they are having trouble getting it through. I am all for the rights of animals, and have always been, but this movement in New York is not about that, it is about something else, something angry and disturbing, and New Yorkers are not buying it, according to a new poll which shows that there is no race, age, gender or ethnic group in the city that supports the carriage horse ban. I wonder how the mayor will rationalize ignoring that.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, I don’t wish to abandon the horses or the people who drive their carriages.

Sometimes, the good guys really do win. We’ll see, it is far from over. I wonder if the horses will be talking to me on Cape Cod.

Maria and I cherish every second together, even more so this summer, when my heart was stopped and re-started. Definitely a perspective-altering experience. I have been working hard to recover, Maria has been working hard to help me recover. We hope to use this time to get our feet back on the earth. The plan is to bolt Saturday morning and return towards the end of next week.