Celebrating Team Xeena!

Let’s celebrate one of Sparkle’s amazing granddaughters — Bright Star Xeena ⭐️

Kim shares:

“This past weekend Xeena earned her SDDA Master Champion title in scent detection. To earn this title you must have 10 titling scores (which equals a total of 30 passes) at the advanced and excellent level (a minimum of 3 titling scores must be at the excellent level). To get a titling score you need passes in all 3 components - containers, interiors, and exteriors. In order to qualify for a MACH you also must have a minimum of 3 Gold scores of 96% or higher (Xeena ended up with 9 gold and 1 silver).

Going into the weekend Xeena needed 1 more interior pass at the excellent level to finish her 10th titling score. Excellent interiors can be tricky as there are 3 rooms to search - one room has 1 hide, one room has 2 hides and one room has no hides, plus there can be food distractors in any or all of the rooms. It is up to each team to determine how many hides are in each room but if you make an error, you are not allowed to continue to the next room. So it is a bit of a mental game for the handler as you decide if you are ready to move to the next room. The hides at this level are also more complicated for the dog. Xeena did a great job finding the hides and I held my own in reading her and calling each room correctly. We finished all 3 rooms in under 3 minutes (there is a 15 minute time limit) with a 1 point deduction for Xeena’s indication on a hide being a bit off (the hide was in a stapler on a desk and Xeena alerted directly below the stapler on the edge of the desk).

Xeena definitely loves the nosework game and I love being her teammate.”

WOWZA!!!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO TEAM XEENA.

This is Grief

I wish I were one to create a beautiful memorial movie for my dogs, filled with all my favorite photos of them and a lovely song to accompany the images.

I keep waiting to be inspired to write a meaningful obituary for each of the girls who have left. An obituary that could capture who they were and what they meant. Like the one I wrote for my dad just a little over two years ago.

Maybe that is the problem — the serial losses. The backlog of obituaries from the past few years. The newspaper deadline forced me to action with my dad’s obituary but the rest? The words are frozen in the trauma of loss after loss.

And so while I can’t find the words or the song she deserves — here is the summary of Sparkle’s obituary: She was perfect.

So so perfect.

💔

Threes

I am a translator. An educator. Someone who takes experiences and translates that into what I hope is useful knowledge.

I can’t help it.

Maybe it is just how I make meaning — imagining that somehow the Bad Thing I endured can somehow make a similar Bad Thing less awful for someone else.

As if finding the right words, the right ways to convey what I learned — maybe I can help one person. And if I help one person, then this meaningless thing has meaning.

In the past eight months, two of my beloved girls left suddenly — first, Claire and then Harper. I had no time to prepare. No choices were left to me. My MT vet said that what happened to Claire was so unusual that it was like she was struck by lightening.

Indeed.

Here — and then just gone. How does that even happen?! And it did. Twice.

And now I have the opposite — a slow, devastating, confusing march to the end of a beloved dog’s life. So many decisions. Complicated decisions. Hard decisions.

Sometimes I tell Sparkle that it would be okay if she needed to die in her sleep. She just wags her tail.

I have had months to prepare.

And I am not prepared to lose this dog. I never will be.

This morning I have been thinking about which way is worse — that struck by lightening ending or this gradual loss of Sparkle’s sparkle. I have decided they are both awful but in different ways.

April 19, 2025

I will have more to say about this process with Sparkle but today I want to take this opportunity to speak from The Dark Place of loss and grief — my second home for the past 3+ years — about what to say to someone like me who is about to prove that bad things come in threes.

Super important and first on my list — there are no bright sides. No “at least…”

When we move to a place of “at least she is not suffering” or “she had a long and wonderful life” we have left the bereaved person alone in The Dark Place because of our retreat to the bright side.

When your heart is shattered, nobody can take you to the bright side, and they should not try. When they do try — and people always do — it makes it worse because you realize two things: 1. This person does not see me or my shattered soul. 2. I am alone here in The Dark Place.

Did you know I have a website about all this grief stuff? Here is a page from that website: Skip the Platitudes

The truth is that offering condolences is hard and tricky and we might get it wrong — but trying our best to offer support is better than saying nothing at all. All any of us can ever do is to try.

I don’t know which of these days will be Sparkle’s Angel Day.

But it will be soon 💔