I am sad to tell you that my little radio show, “Talking To Animals,” is officially over. Thomas Toscano, my partner and the stations’s Executive Director, told the board members he was quitting  and is gone.

Thomas, a conductor at heart, has a great flair for drama, and he went out in style, with a mass e-mail announcing he was leaving with little or no warning. Then he left.

It was vintage Thomas, it reminded me of some of my own dramatic exists from places when I was younger. Eventually, I realized that no one really cared when or how I left, I was always replaced quickly and without much fuss.

There are very few indispensable people in the world.

I was sorry to see Thomas go that way, but that is Thomas, he does things his way, and I can’t say a part of me doesn’t admire that. I try to do things my way too.

I loved taking his portrait, he has the most intense and expressive face.

I had a complex relationship with Thomas. We had the most wonderful chemistry on the air and I loved his intelligence and wit and fierce individualism. I know no one quite like him, or even close.

It would be exciting to be his friend, I hope that can happen. Much of the time, we did feel like friends. We are in touch.

Thomas has great gifts and I hope he finds a place for them. I admit to being angry as well as sad. It seems my whole life has been dogged and shaped and marked by the political machinations of people who can’t get along with one another or find ways to work things out.

Really? Did this have to happen? He warned me a couple of weeks about his plans, so I just choose to stop the show, it would have been painful and false for me to sit there and pretend everything was normal. I told him I never lie to the people reading the blog, I have no secrets any longer.

Sometimes I think human beings will simply take the world down with them, it sometimes seems to be their destiny.

Thomas was a huge part of the program’s success. I am grateful to  him. People loved listening to him. He worked  unconscionable hours and it will be so hard to replace  him. But they always do.

I will feel better in the morning. But I need to thank you all for your support, before all this fades in my mind and yours.

I worked very hard on that show and came to love it. This all blew up just as “Talking To Animals” was starting to catch fire.  I did see this coming, so did many of you. In many ways, it was inevitable.

The truth is the program was important to me.

And I certainly knew the risk when I started. I have no complaints.

I had the good luck to meet my new friend Cynthia Daniello, I am so glad to have found such an admirable person. I am so glad to have had to chance to talk with others as well. I loved hearing your sometimes riotous dog stories.

I will miss them. I need to find out whether Anne Sweeney used visualizations to get her dogs from marking the furniture.

We were at last getting lots of calls, and there was lots of good feedback. So, in a sense, we did it, we put an honest, thoughtful and helpful show about animals on the radio, at least for a couple of months.

There was a kind of riotous tug-of-war going on with me and Thomas about calls. He never cared much for calls, he thought it was more interesting for us to just talk. I didn’t know it but he would off turn off the call switch so he could talk and we could talk together. I didn’t know, I kept wondering why I was getting all of these e-mails but few calls.

Why, I asked, were people telling me they couldn’t get through? He just smiled or shrugged.

He suggested I was nuts, there were plenty of calls, more than enough. Then I figured out he was switching the phones on and off. Thus the messages.

But we had a wonderful chemistry and I loved to hear his oddball theories about life, dogs and the universe. He is an original.

He told me his great dream was to go  off into the woods and live alone. He might be getting his chance. I urged him to take a dog with him, but he says he can’t afford it.

But I am a master of letting go, and once having thanked everybody, I will let go, this will take a few days. I will grieve for this show a bit, I’ve wanted to do it for so long, and I – we – came so close. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone else will offer me this kind of air time in the Corporate Nation.

So time to move forward. I believe I have a lot to contribute, and I will keep on trying to contribute it, so long as anybody wants to read or hear it. Maria was also a great part of it, her appearances on the radio show persuaded both of us to work together on a media project, thus the podcast was born.

She was, I thought, and is a natural, bright, warm and full of ideas. We worked well together, talk about chemistry.

So it wasn’t for nothing.

Maria and I are already turning our energy towards the new podcast, “Katz And Wulf On Bedlam Farm,” we’ve already done five episodes and will be up on Google and Itunes shortly, if we are not already.

I am so grateful to those very good people who contributed money to the radio station, and called in and e-mailed questions and comments to me. This was a long-time dream of mine, and I was  happiest when I was actually talking to people, talking about their dogs, getting to know them, and in many cases,   them.

That was the core idea, a thoughtful, civil discussion about animals. I won’t lie, it does hurt. I can’t quite see that there was a good reason for it to end this way, but I also accept human nature, especially the human nature of men. They always seem to find a way to fight.

As you know, I am not big on looking back. I do relish the now.

I am grateful for the experience, I got to fulfill one of my dreams, even if only for a while. I researched every single question and learned a lot. I loved  having my own radio show.

The station has kindly contacted me and asked me to stay on.

But I can’t see doing the show without Thomas, and I need to go out and earn some money, the show took a lot of work and I am not really in the position of working for nothing. The podcast might draw some ads.

I  hope we will be able to get some calls on the podcast one day soon. Thanks to WBTNAM for giving me two hours of your airtime every week. I would like to continue supporting them if I can.

I thank you Thomas, for helping me do this show, and by offering your great spirit and intellect. I  hope you find your rightful place in the world.

Thanks to all of you for  your support and trust. You did contribute to it, it was your show as much as mine. That is upsetting for me.  I hoped to justify it.

Our latest Podcast, No. 5. Katz and Wulf On Bedlam