My new car should be ready for me tomorrow, I’m cleaning out my current car, the 11-year-old Highlander that has been with Maria and me since the beginning. I’ve got 177,000 miles on it, and it will feel strange driving anything else. It’s been a great car for me.

Cleaning out the glove compartment, I found my 2019 Therapy Dog tag for Red, and I took it out to keep it in my study. I used to think dogs like Red – I called them “Lifetime Dogs”- came once in a lifetime.

I have since learned that we can often get more than one. Rose was a lifetime dog, so was Frieda, in many ways, and Lenore in another. Fate is a lifetime dog for Maria, and I think Zinnia is turning out that way for me.

But Red is the Gold Standard for Lifetime Dogs, at least for me. He came to me to guide me to another place, to widen my therapy work as a way of connecting both with the refugee children and the Mansion residents.

Red was not only a brilliant herding dog, he was a brilliant therapy dog. He paved the way for me and for the Army Of Good, he looks over my shoulder every day.

Zinnia has slipped gracefully and easily into my life, often following in Red’s footsteps. I sometimes think he briefed her before he went away to enter the life of someone else. Spirit dogs do that.

I am glad to find this tag, I’ll keep it in my office and look at it from time to time. Zinnia is a wonderful dog, so is Bud, but Red is  Red, there will not ever be another quite like him.

I have no idea where he is now, but wherever he is, he is guiding someone else to a better place.