Greeting, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has been feeling like crap the past few days. Fall allergies probably coupled with some sort of cold bug that the Villainettes brought home. He hasn’t felt up to much when given the choice between watching baseball or football on TV and something else…

Your Maximum Leader read that Ted had the sad task of putting down his dog, Sam, two days ago. Ted and his family are in my thoughts.

While sitting thinking about what Ted had to do, your Maximum Leader thought that if you are a “pet person” you really set yourself up for regular heartaches. Your Maximum Leader is a pet person (a dog man frankly). And now that he is thinking about it, he’s suffered a lot due to the death or disappearance of his pet. If you are a dog lover, you can expect that every 8-12 years (or longer depending on the breed) you are going to have to deal with the trauma of your beloved pet dying. That is pretty hard. There seems to be some sort of cosmic injustice that relegates our pets to such short life spans compared to our own. This is not to say that the joy a pet brings isn’t great during the pet’s life — it is. But it is more to say that you take the joy knowing there will be heartache as well.

As your Maximum Leader was typing this he realized that his dog, Maia, is 7 years old now. She is a black lab/whippet mix. We rescued her from the SPCA in Virginia Beach a few months after we had to put down Muffin, the dog Mrs Villain brought to our marriage. It seems like only yesterday that Muffin was vibrant and active. Your Maximum Leader remembers (also like it was yesterday) the day we had to put Muffin down. That day capped off the worst Christmas season your Maximum Leader ever had. He remembers the day we got Maia. He also is now thinking that depending on the longevity of the breeds involved, Maia is likely half-way through her life. That has made your Maximum Leader feel a little melancholy now.

He’s going to stop typing and start brushing his dog for a while. It will cheer him up, and probably please Maia greatly as well.

Carry on.