Dark days.

In the past few days, news from Israel has been devastating. The past months of war in the Ukraine have been catastrophic. The past years of the pandemic have fundamentally changed the way our world works.

I was luckier than most because I had the world’s best therapist on duty 24/7: my little dog Peri. Perhaps, in these dark days, you can escape with me to share in her wisdom and humor. Her book comes out today, and while Peri can’t change the darkness, she did light it up for me.

Why dogs make better therapists than cats. — Peri

In her review HERE of Oh My Dog! by Peri Taub, PTWP (Pandemic Therapist With Paws), best-selling author Georgia Rose writes:

Oh My Dog! is extremely well written and very funny. I defy anyone not to be entertained by it. But it also shows the love between dog and human and what our furry therapists can bring to our lives, as well as what it means when they leave them. Highly recommended, I’m sure you’ll love it!

▼(´ᴥ`)▼ 

Available from Amazon in eBook and paperback.
https://mybook.to/OMD_TherapistWithPaws

“They’re trying to kill me.” Barb aimed a quality glare at the narrow streets outside the car window. “And I can’t kill all of them first. I’d never be able to hide that many bodies in a foreign country.”

The Hub kept his gaze on the red light. “No one is trying to kill you.”

Barb narrowed her eyes at unmasked pedestrians crossing in front of our car. “They aren’t even pretending to put their facemasks over their noses. They’re breathing at me.”

As an experienced therapist with paws, I know exactly what to do when my human waxes murderous. I sit up, head tilted to one side, ears perked. If her voice sounds happy, I give a butt-wiggle. But if it sounds urgent, I offer my belly for rubs, adding a small whine that says, “You can tell me. I’ll always agree with you. I’ll follow you even when you move to foreign places like Illinois and England. (Well, maybe not Illinois.) And I don’t have opposable thumbs, so I’ll never post anything on Facebook.”

We were in the middle of Italy, in the middle of a pandemic. Barb had been in lockdown with the Hub for over a year and frankly, she needed help. But so did everyone else in the world. It was Catch-22. She couldn’t get emergency therapy because it was sane to expect the pandemic to make everyone insane. Luckily, there was a therapist right under her nose, the only one who adored her with a single-minded ferocity eclipsing all else (with the possible exception of anyone holding a dog bowl at food o’clock). I’d been in training for this my whole life, and I absolutely nailed the pandemic therapist (with paws) role.

Barb and I made a deal. We shared the couch, pre-dawn walks, Covid haircuts, wound self-treatment via Doctors Google and YouTube, and a pandemic. Barb didn’t assault serial killers anti-maskers, and I didn’t eat out of the trash can.

Mostly.