The anguish of feeling your heart die a little: Magnificent Tess left us Thursday, 9/5/2019 at 13 years, 2 months.

Tess, our golden and Abby our yellow lab

Update: A worthy obituary

The Yin and Yang of Life and Love: The Anguish of feeling your heart die a little.

Sadly, Tess, our golden retriever left us Thursday 9/5/2019... 

... and Abby, our yellow Lab, photographed in 2013 to represent the *Yin and Yang of life, are now in their 13th year. Sadly, neither is expected to make it much farther.

This is a tribute of their enormous contribution to my wife Kathy and I and to the greater world where they made their mark outside of home. We love them with all our hearts and the sad truth that owners mostly outlive their beloved pets is upon us once again.

Abby has been with us since right after birth, truly the cutest and best of the litter. We fell in love with Tess the moment we saw her in a shelter when she was just a year old.

Both are therapy dogs, recently retired because the spirit is willing but the bodies became weak. Both served years as HOPE: Animal Assistance Crisis Response dogs whose job it was to bring comfort to those in need at national and local disasters of every type.

They/we have been to the Washington D.C. Naval Yard for three days after the mass shooting in 2013 where 12 working there were killed, offering comfort and calm to all who were deeply affected.

They/we have been active participants for five years at Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), a program offering help, hope and healing to all those grieving a loved one lost serving in America's Armed Forces. Each year for three days abutting  Memorial Day, TAPS would gather 1500-plus survivors--family members and children--in Arlington, Virginia just a mile from Arlington National Cemetery where many of their loved ones lie, offering programs to assist in every facet of recovery assistance and need.

Our dogs and Kathy have been active in hospital and hospice care with weekly visits going back 10 years. The response to this comfort is overwhelmingly unbelievable in many cases.

Kathy has made up a beautiful song that stops Tess in her tracks every time. Tess stops, sits and looks back as Kathy softly sings:

Oh the places we've been to, the things we've done,

I couldn't have done without you.

The people we've met and the smiles we''ve made

I couldn't have done without you.

You've opened your soul, given your heart

To everyone we meet

You let me see, through your sweet eyes,

Everyone is the same.

The places we've been to, the things we've done

I coudn't have done without you.

Bum Bum

 Badum Bum.

And of course, there are more of these stories untold. But most of all, they have been our pets, giving and receiving love as only a pet owner could know.

So life is hard now. Tess has cancer and ecoli. Abby is blind and is on seizure medicine. And both have had orthopaedic surgeries for hips and knees (thank God for Pet Insurance) and arthritis.  But, Abby and Tess still remain at a level of love and togetherness that says, "Not just yet."

It is/will be one of the hardest of times for any pet owner and, once again, it will be our time. So we relish in our lives together, their love and the memories while we still have that heart-to-heart connection that we know is fleeting.  A good pet owner never lets beloved pets suffer and we will not. But at this moment, we are mutually and affectionately one.

Lily, our  LabraDane

We do have a junior member therapy dog taking over those hospital and hospice duties. Lily is another adoptee, now about six we think. She is a LabraDane, a mix between a Labrador retriever and great Dane as you may notice. She is the big little sister who will sorely miss her adoptive sisters, but she, and we, will carry on.



*This is the original Yin/Yang post from 2013 and it gives the full meaning of this ancient Taoist symbol.

The Yin and Yang of it all

Tess, our golden retriever, Abby our yellow lab

Tess and Abby, our two beautiful living yin-yang interpreters of the traditional ancient Taoist symbol (called the taigi) of life and existence.

Yin-yan, in Eastern thought, are two complementary forces that make up all aspects and phenomena of life. Yin is a symbol of earth, femaleness, darkness, passivity, and absorption. It is present in even numbers, in valleys and streams, and is represented by the tiger, the colour orange. Let Tess be ying.

Yang is conceived of as heaven, maleness, light, activity, and penetration. It is present in odd numbers, in mountains, and is represented by the dragon, the color azure. That would be Abby.

The two are both said to proceed from the Great Ultimate (taiji), their interplay on one another (as one increases the other decreases) being a description of the actual process of the universe and all that is in it. In harmony, the two are depicted as the light and dark halves of a circle.


The black and white halves of the Yin-Yang symbol are similar to the two sides of a coin. They are different, and distinct, yet one could not exist without the other. It is what the two sides have in common - what makes them "the same."


This idea is illustrated in Shih-tou's poem:

The Identity Of Relative And Absolute

Within light there is darkness,
but do not try to understand that darkness.
Within darkness there is light,
but do not look for that light.
Light and darkness are a pair,
like the foot before and the foot behind in walking.
Each thing has its own intrinsic value
and is related to everything else in function and position.
Ordinary life fits the absolute as a box and its lid.
The absolute works together with the relative,
like two arrows meeting in mid-air.

Well, I hope we have all learned something today... and this all started when I noticed how our dogs sometimes sleep.

About Tess and Abby... Tess has just turned 7 and Abby, half-past 6. They are both therapy dogs bringing comfort, ease and calming to victims of floods, fires, shootings and other disasters, natural and otherwise. They regularly go to hospitals, nursing homes and hospice houses and, like all the superheros, try to be where they are needed. They are the greatest.