Since announcing that Chloe is leaving, Maria and I have received nothing but kind and loving and thoughtful messages from people, thank you.

Perhaps times are changing and the animal world is getting tired of judgment and self-righteousness. Maybe we are learning what animals are really like – Chloe will be very happy in her new home, we checked it out the other day, horse-loving people, horses and goats, the best hay, good fences, big pastures. Everything she needs and deserves.

The first dog I ever gave away was Homer, a show border collie who was not the right dog for me. We just didn’t click, and almost everything he did annoyed or frustrated me. I heard myself yelling at him one day to catch up with us – he dawdled far behind on walks, poor guy – and I recognized the voice of my father, scolding me for being a sissy and a bed wetter and a crummy athlete.

I knew I had to spare him the fate of living with me, I am not one of those people who loves all animals equally, I think that is equivalent to loving none of them.

This was the first time I encountered the peculiar belief of some animal lovers that giving away a dog for any reason was a form of cruel and selfish abandonment, even callous abuse. I got one of those Internet brushes with pure hostility.

Homer deserved better than me, and he got it, he went to a young boy and his family down the block, they loved him unreservedly and he loved them back, it was just the home he needed and he thrived there for many years, he died only last year.

In many ways, this was the most loving thing I had ever done for an animal, and it taught me a great lesson about me, and my own need to be more patient and accepting and thoughtful about the dogs I brought int my life.

I hadn’t done my homework. Homer’s only crime was my only crime as a child – he wasn’t the dog I wanted, just as I wasn’t the son my father wanted.

Unfortunately for my father, he couldn’t re-home me. He was a social worker, and it would have looked bad.

Life happens to all of us, it is not a drama,  it is just life.

I know how much Maria loves Chloe and I see how difficult it is for her to give her up, even to such  loving and thoughtful animal people as our friend Treasure Wilkinson and her partner Donna and their families. It looked and felt like grief this week, she is working through it.

Maria is fine with her decision, it was the right one, but it is also, of course,  sad.  She expected something different.

She and Chloe have a beautiful connection, but Maria’s life has changed in the past year, she is very busy and her ascending life as a successful artist requires her full attention and almost all of her energy.

She just doesn’t have the time to give Chloe the work and attention we know she wants and deserves. There are also the dogs and donkeys and sheep and cats. We don’t want to have more animals than we can know well and love.

I gave another dog away a decade ago – Clementine – a beautiful yellow Lab, who went to live with a wonderful health worker in Vermont and got the active outdoor life I could not really give her. She gets to run every day, all over the Green Mountains. I love thinking of her doing that.

And Pearl, who went to live with my daughter in Brooklyn. All of these dogs had the most wonderful homes with doting people and lived long and happy lives (Clementine is still alive), all had better lives than I could have given them.

My dogs now – Red and Fate – all have great lives in so many ways and are much-loved, as you can perhaps see.  I have learned a lot about how to get a dog that fits into my life. I don’t get dogs because they need to be rescued, are “cute, or are seen on TV or in a movie. I don’t get dogs to make me feel righteous, but to join together in a long and deep partnership.

For the dog’s sake, it is not always about rescue, there is never only one way to get a dog.

Rescue is sometimes a wonderful option, as it was with Frieda and other dogs of mine, but it is more about the hard and careful work of thinking and researching and asking questions. For me, getting a dog is not an act of morality, but of diligence.  Lots of dogs suffer at the hands of humans who use them to feel good about themselves.

Sometimes the right dog is in a shelter, or being rescued, sometimes they are with an ethical breeder. It takes a lot of work to get a great dog, it rarely happens on impulse. And few people bother to do it, so many see the acquisition of a dog as a statement.

I never tell anyone where to get a dog, that is arrogant and obnoxious. The best dog for you is the one you will love and can care for and who will be content and fulfilled living with you.

Same with a horse.

So many dogs are acquired for the wrong reasons, or do not turn out to be the dogs people wanted. Many spend their lives being ignored, shut up, yelled at, even abused. I see people yelling angrily at their dogs all the time. Horse trainers tell me it breaks their hearts to see horses spending their lives standing around with nothing to do, as was almost the fate of the carriage horses in New York. The carriage horses, the trainers tell me, are the lucky ones.

Dogs and people are different. But like us, they need to be encouraged and affirmed and loved.

We need to accept them for what they are, and not always succumb to the arrogant and greedy messages of many dog trainers  selling their books and videos – that any dog can be transformed, can be trained to be anything to anyone, if you are just strong enough and tough enough. This makes people feel stupid and hopeless. If you get the right dog, you won’t have many training problems, and if you do, you can most often easily overcome them.

It isn’t true that all dogs can be miraculously transformed to meet our needs.

We end up blaming ourselves and then the dogs when they can’t be  what we wish, and that is just another form of abuse. Sometimes you have to love them by looking in the mirror at yourself and  letting go. Every animal is not right for every person.

I am not one of those people who loves all animals, or even all dogs. Love for me is not unconditional, there needs to be conditions.  I want my love to be earned, not demanded.

And just because a dog needs a home doesn’t meant it should be with me.

I love some dogs and are indifferent to most. For me, to love all animals is to really love none, because the term has no meaning if it is applied so randomly.  I don’t love raccoons in the way I love my dogs. I love  Red and Fate to death, they bring me continuous joy and pleasure, and I try to do the same for them. It just works.

I admire Maria for making this decision about Chloe, it would have been easy enough just to keep Chloe and take pictures of her. She was causing no trouble, and we have the hay and the barn. Money is not the problem.

But Maria realized she was getting busier and Chloe could do better, and felt obliged to try to do better. Good for her. That is selfless love, the purest kind.

Animals do not make career and lifestyle choices. If they have love, good food and fresh water, shelter and the company of their own kind, they are quite content. Contrary to popular and narcissistic human belief, animals do not wallow in grief when they are re-homed That is a human projection of our needs. They get on with life.

Animals belong to a different universe, their true connection is to one another, they come and go in our lives.

Millions of dogs are re-homed every year, I don’t know of one who died of grief or lament for having been moved. Think of the thousands of Katrina dogs who have successfully re-homed.

A few days after Chloe goes to Treasure, she will be just fine, and if for some reason she isn’t, she can come back here at anytime.

Chloe is going to a better place, even though she is loved and will be missed, and you can’t love anyone or thing much more than that.