Maggie the Mutt

Our first dog, Maggie, came to be ours because she followed my cousin Danny home one day, and my Auntie Eileen said he couldn’t keep her. She was some sort of German Shepard mutt. Kathleen and I were quite young, and were not very gentle with her, but she bore our clumsy attentions with patience. She had very little use for anyone else, however, and was apparently quite frightening to anyone she deemed a threat to the kids (us). She died at a kennel where she boarded while we were in Florida on vacation one winter.

To this day, the first ornament that goes on my Christmas tree each year is a simple sled I made of popsicle sticks, painted green, with the name Maggie poorly written across it in white.