It is Thursday morning, and already, there are so many distractions pulling me away from writing. I have two dogs, both schnauzers and one over eighteen years now. Plus, I am an outside person. I was raised in the freedom of the sun and sea of the Caribbean.

(Chosen, my childhood memoir, available on Amazon, tells all.) I was a landscaper for nearly thirty years; I love my garden. The spring is calling with every breath I take. But I must pull myself away from the window and concentrate on the subject at hand, the Alphabet challenge. Today, I have reached the heady letter of E. 

My words for today are Eyesight, Editing, and Eugene.

As spring reveals its beauty, flowers open, and leaves unfurl, I am thankful I have my Eyesight. Before I even put my fingers on the keyboard, It is a long time since I have written by hand first. I have spent days Editing in my head what I want or might like to write about. So today, I am finally making the commitment to finish this blog, and tell you about another dog of mine.

E is for Eugene, my first schnauzer and companion dog. After a few false starts, he was named after the place from where I adopted him, Eugene, Oregon. He had unclipped ears and was nearly always shaggy; I never had enough money to go to a groomer. But he was my constant companion for ten-plus years and loved going on family outings. He had a constant companion in Sammy, my husband’s dog, who was also from Eugene, Oregon, and had been with me when I collected Eugene from the humane society.

Eugene was great friends with many of my landscape clients. I had a couple of clients who were ill, one with Lou Gehrig’s disease, A.L.S., and another with aphasia and memory loss. He loved those two ladies. Eugene would run through their open doors and jump onto their laps until they were no longer there. He stopped and howled at their doors to show how much he missed them.

He loved to sit on a chair at the table when I took a coffee break from work, much to the amusement of fellow coffee drinkers. I had a big truck back in those days, and he sat on the middle console and would put his head on my right shoulder and give a quick lick of my ear. He knew I didn’t like to be licked, but a quick one was Endearing.

Following a leg fracture from a fall in icy weather, he contracted S.A.R.D.S,(Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration Syndrome) and lost most of his Eyesight. I was amazed at how quickly he learned the difference between the commands: “Go to the left, go to the right, and, between step up or down, or jump up or down.”

This is of Eugene at Artist’s Point, Mt. Baker, during a summer visit during his last years.

His last trip with me was to Boise, Idaho, where he joined some of my family on a trip down the river in a rubber dinghy.