MEMOIR

No More New Year’s Resolutions

I just want to be half the person my dogs believed I was

My dog Ace thought of me as a great hunter and provider. He trusted me without question and never judged me — even when I was carrying a cat. (Photo from the author’s collection)

With the year becoming a distant memory and all of my 2024 New Year Resolutions long faded into obscurity, I resolved to make an important change in my life with the coming of 2025.

I would stop making resolutions.

But I did decide to change one thing in the coming year: I would stop writing exclusively about politics and add some life stories, if only so my grandchildren wouldn’t look back and think I was just an angry, crotchety old man.

Sooner or later, all the really good essayists I’ve read write something about their dogs. And, I think it’s because there’s something about man and woman’s best friend that is inspirational. And, no matter what happens in the relationships between the sexes, it’s dogs who provide the best medicine for what ails ya.

I want to make the small observation that President-elect Donald Trump was the first president in over a hundred years who didn’t own a dog.

Frankly, I think that says a lot about him, the tension in our lives his first presidency brought, and the continuing state of the division present in our country as he returns to office.