As I’ve written, I’m not big on looking back; I prefer the present to the past and the future when it comes to brooding and reflecting. I like the present very much. I’m not crazy about the past and have nothing to say about the future.

I looked up and focused on my photo of Lenore and Rose, two of the wonderful dogs I’ve been privileged to have in my life. Lenore was my first therapy dog, although she didn’t last long at that work.

She was great with people in hospice care and even more loving with their food.

I know some of you remember these two dogs, and I felt a tug looking at the photos; I wanted to share them, and they hang on our bedroom wall.

She was a master of sneaking food when I wasn’t looking. I have a zero-problem policy when it comes to therapy dogs. One strike, and they are out.

Lenore was my first Love Dog, and Zinnia has followed in her heels (she would never sneak food off a sick person’s tray.) Lenore was a wonderful dog; she had a spine injury and was in so much pain we put her down.

Lenore adopted the Helldog Frieda when she arrived with Maria. She taught her commands, kept her company, and broke up fights between her and Rose. Like Zinnia, she seemed to love all living things, even barn cats.

I see Rose (also in the photo) as one of the most remarkable dogs I’ve had, along with Red. Rose was a border collie, smart and independent. If anybody tried to cuddle with her or talk baby talk, she’d grown at them and move off.

She was always by my side, but we didn’t cuddle either.

Zinnia is too young for the title of most remarkable dogs, and she has not had to encounter the challenges of the wild as Rose did when she and I came to the first Bedlam Farm in Hebron.

Rose saved my life and my ass many times, and I wrote one of my favorite books about her, The Story Of Rose; it’s an e-book on Amazon for $2.99. Random House wouldn’t publish it in hardcover.

Rose was a Jack London dog, loyal, brave, and intelligent.

When I started sheepherding, I rented a breeding lamb that was not fond of people. I went into the pasture with him – foolishly.

He rammed me from the rear and knocked me into a fence post, causing a river of blood to the floor and knocking my glasses off where I couldn’t find them.

He kept coming at me, and he was big and mean. And with the blog rushing down my face and my glasses gone, I could barely see where he was, let alone run away.

Rose, down in the fenced-in kennel below, saw this, dug her way out of the kennel, raced up the hill, and grabbed the ram by his testicles.

He bellowed and screamed and spun around and fled. Rose walked me down the mountain; she seemed disgusted with me.

She was never in a kennel again and became the managing director of the farm.

She was by my side for the first six years. I lived alone on the farm, and no sheep ever got too close to me again without a nosebleed.

Rose hated to be cuddled and never slept on the bed. I never knew where she slept. I discovered one night that she sat in the window and watched the sheep, and when a lamb was born, she came over and nipped me in the ear until I got up. She often did the same thing whenever I fell on the ice.

Rose had no sense of humor but a fierce sense of duty. She was not a cute dog, but a dog.

One night in a blizzard, three coyotes started coming down the hillside and heading for three new born lambs, whose mothers had lost sight and smell of them in the storm.  I was trying to find them. I could hear their bleating.

Rose marched up the hill ahead of me – I was screaming at her to come down – and she challenged the coyotes, giving them her fiercest border collie eye. She never wavered or blinked. I don’t think she even heard me.

I thought she was a goner, but she kept moving up the farm, getting closer. They blinked first and ran off. She came down slowly to help round up the lambs, covered in snow from head to tail.

Part of my craziness may come from hitting my head on ice that often up in Hebron; Rose always got me up. Rose died of a brain tumor. It broke my heart to see her like that, she was losing her mind.

I rarely look at that photo, one of the first photos I ever took with my new Canon 5D. It’s also one of the very few I framed.

It was nice to stop and nod to those beautiful dogs, dogs have been with me at every passage of my life, and I am grateful for every one. Rose and Lenore will always have a special place in my heart, as do several others.

It feels like another life. I remember lying on the kitchen floor with my new camera to get this photo, which I treasure. In a few months, I’ll look at it again. I don’t want to dwell on the past, but I don’t want to forget it either.

I will never forget Rose or Lenore.