Five or six years ago, a gifted Woodstock, N.Y.,  artist named Ellie Steffens had an art show of paintings she had done of the animals at Bedlam Farm – Lenore, Elvis, and one of the dogs. Maria and I traveled there for her show, which was humbling and stunning, and she gave me this portrait of Lenore she had taken from my photographs.

I brought it to the first Bedlam Farm and hung it in my study, then brought it to our new farm and hung it in my study there. Lenore loved to sleep on the couch beneath it, she was present for almost everything I wrote, in my books or here on the blog. Lenore died at the end of last winter, and I got rid of the couch. I replaced it with a beautiful Victorian couch that I had restored. I used it to store my camera bags and some papers, I never sit on it.

But Fate, our new dog, has taken to it. Sometimes I turn around and see her sitting in very much the same position as Lenore did, and it is poignant to see the portrait of one beloved dog hanging over the body of the other as she sleeps. It was Lenore’s couch, her place, and Fate is a very different kind of dog than Lenore, although seeing the two of them like that, they are perhaps more similar than I might have thought. We connect with them, heart and soul, in so many ways.

I think of Lenore often when I see that portrait, it perfectly captured her sweet and soulful demeanor. It seems like a long time ago that Lenore was here, in my life, on that couch. I think of life as a wheel, it keeps turning and turning. There it is, portrait and dog, they come and they go, they mark the passages of our time, they become what we need them to be, we project so many of our feelings and emotions onto them.

I used to think we could have only one lifetime dog, but I am already up to four or five, and not done yet. I was a little bit right.

Lenore’s only work was love, Fate’s is broader than that, I think, although she also can be very loving. She would not happily give up the sheep to hang around with humans.

I do not believe any dog would wish their peson to mourn and miss them for too long.  So I don’t. I see so many dogs up on social media every day, posted in remembrance of people who miss them. I would not be at ease doing that. I honor her love by loving another dog. She is not ever a source of grief for me, I smile every time I mention or write her name.

The strange truth of dogs is that you can, in fact,  replace them, unlike people. I have always written with a dog at my fate or sleeping nearby, every page of every book. Even the ferociously energetic and restless Fate understands my need for quiet, when I am writing she sits up on that couch and doesn’t move a muscle, about the only time she is ever truly still. I guess this is her work, too, as it was Lenore’s. Only the couch has changed.