Good morning my DU family,

[JMCKUSICK]

I've spent a lot of time thinking about love in these last 72 hours,

Love, to me, is such an amazing gift that I'm so grateful for the opportunity to get better at offering it through my pets.

Not many of us are born into healthy, loving families where love is taught and practiced. Many of us need to learn on the fly that love is precious, learned, practiced and not as simple as puppy love.

Love is everything 1 Corinthians 13 says it is and like inner stillness, or No-Limit holdem lol, it takes a few minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.

Please give us a day filled with opportunities to to be patient, to be kind, to protect, to trust, to hope and to perservere. To Love

Have loving, fulfilling day DU,
Love, John

[Diamond_Dog]

1. Well said JM

and back atcha.

[JMCKUSICK]

6. Thank youbDiamond_Dog

[no_hypocrisy]

2. GOOD MORNING, JOHN!!!

[JMCKUSICK]

7. Good morning No_hypocrisy

[hlthe2b]

3. Warm, embracing hugs all around. Care for the people and the pets in your life while

looking out for those who have neither.

[JMCKUSICK]

9. Well said Hlthe2b

[Emile]

4. Good Morning John

[JMCKUSICK]

10. Good morning Emile, I'm so happy to see you up and around as it were

[Polly Hennessey]

5. Good morning 🌞 I liked the idea that love is an inner stillness.

Whenever I think of our love for our pets I think of this.

"You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you,"

[JMCKUSICK]

11. Exactly! That's living a life well Polly Hennessey.

[JMCKUSICK]

17. I also believe that every act of love emanates

From that inner stillness, or our soul or essence or spirit, even though it's expressed in action.

[SheltieLover]

8. Good morning, John

I hope you, Toby, and kitty are doing well today.

Have you ever read It's All About Love by Bell Hooks? Exceptional read. In a nutshell, love is a verb, something we DO everyday for those we love, not some abstract concept.

[JMCKUSICK]

12. Thank you SheltieLover,

No I haven't, but I agree so completely with your statement.

Love requires work, effort, study, and practice. Love, while felt in the most wonderful ways, in practice is choices, actions, commitment and follow through.

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."

Love is kind of like that, in that our romantic notions are rooted in childhood and I'm grateful for that seed ever being planted.

As a child, we want to experience love, as am adult, I want to practice it, or offer it, and as I wrote yesterday, the more I know you, the more capable of love I am.

Thank you for our conversation through these messages SheltieLover, the affirmation that you and so many others have offered is the very essence of love itself.

[debm55]

13. Have a blessed day, John.

[JMCKUSICK]

15. Hi Debbie, and thank you very much for the call.

[TBF]

14. The way you love your pets says so much about you John

I hope today is calm and that the pain lessens with time

[JMCKUSICK]

16. Thank you TBF

It feels so different this time, compared to Snuggles two plus years ago.

With Snuggles, I felt like something was unfairly taken from me.

With Cuddles, I felt that on Sunday night when the reality hit that this was bad, but it shifted almost suddenly to saying good bye and letting him go.

I know being there as he took his last breath helped, but I feel it's more than that.

We lived great together, it's like nothing was left on the table. So I'm so truly grateful that I was blessed with a day of him, much less four years.

Of course I'm terribly sad, tears flow as I write this, but they're tears of fullness, tears of joy, and tears of awareness and awe of how blessed I've been.