For Zack and Daniel, from Tex

 

 From my journal on February 4, 1998:

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Black branches and silver limbs. The cedars are powder puffs of green and white, branches drooping. The holly tree's red berries are lunch for our Mockingbird. The creek is green and brown rushing water. Tex snores beside me on a pallet while Penelope must be in the bedroom, probably on my bed. 

Earlier we three went for a walk in the snow and oh, the glory of walking in it with fat wet flakes falling on my face, coming almost horizontally with a northern wind over the wooded hillside. 

We went slowly, Tex and I, stopping to look at each new vista. Penelope racing ahead of us in her red sweater and then back to me. We crossed the back creek into Daniel Boone Hollow and stood under a tulip poplar. 

Just watching across to the waterfall of wet gray slate, snow swirling, I stood still so long that the birds forgot I was there. They began to chatter and call, woodpeckers and many others.

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Tex, our Welsh Corgi, was our companion on so many snow walks. He loved snow. I remember standing at the kitchen window and watching him run after the boys' sleds as they came down the hill. Once he stayed out too long with them and actually got a little frostbite on his pink paws. 

We have had so many special dogs over the years but Tex loved his family with a passion. I don't care what the Dog Whisperer says, Tex truly was almost human. Or maybe that is an insult to canines. Would any human have shadowed me so faithfully? Adored me? Hah! It was Tex that stuck to me like a tick when I was sick, when I was recuperating from surgeries, lying at the end of the sofa by my feet or beside me in bed.  

Whenever I was doing whatever I was doing, he was there.

Except when he was with his brothers.