{"id":92,"date":"2005-08-01T10:02:03","date_gmt":"2005-08-01T17:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=92"},"modified":"2005-08-01T10:02:40","modified_gmt":"2005-08-01T17:02:40","slug":"django","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/?p=92","title":{"rendered":"Django"},"content":{"rendered":"

When in pain – physical or mental – the two things I think most soothing are music (specifics vary by person and will be addressed in a later post) and the unconditional love of a pet. When I was fighting the cancer war, ensconsed at Glendale Adventist Hospital, they had a visiting pet program. I remember one morning, when in one of my darker moods, two strangers walked into my room with two small dogs. I was not in the mood to talk with friends, let alone strangers, but they said that was okay and asked if I wanted to pet the dogs. The dogs were already on my bed and snuggling up — irresistable. The couple carried on their own conversation between themselves and left me to the dogs. I don’t know how long they stayed, it may have been only fifteen minutes, but the effect was long lasting and far outweighed the ocassional unrequested drop-ins from various clerics.
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I had a dog when I was very young, a poodle name Bosco. He was a nervous fellow, not meant for city life — or maybe he didn’t like wearing a bonnet and riding in a doll’s carriage — and he soon went to live with someone else in the suburbs. After that we had a succession of cats. So it may have been that hospital visit that primed me for my meeting Django, or maybe it was just fate. It was only a couple of months after the chemo and radiation treatments, and, in anticipation of further medical treatment, I had moved to New York City to be near to my family. One afternoon the apartment buzzer rang and the building superintendent said he had a package for me. I went downstairs and saw a puppy playing in the lobby. It was a cute little black and white ball of fluff, and when I sat down on the floor he jumped right into my lap. (I later learned that this fluffball was a pure-bred Shih-Tzu.) After a few minutes, I asked the super where was my package, and he pointed to the dog. Turns out, some idiot in a building down the block was going to take this dog to the pound, and that building’s superintendent mentioned it to our super who said he’d find a home for the dog. I was told his name was Sluggo, which I promptly changed to Django. <\/p>\n

When I moved back to California, my parents agreed to dog sit while John and I got settled in the new house. That was seven years ago, and Django is still living with my parents — the three of them are inseparable. You may have seen Django with Dad on the pages of Jazz Times<\/em>, or on his web site (Django is in picture #11 of the First Meeting collection here<\/a>) , or in this shot I copied from a Japanese magazine. Django never strays too far from Mom, either, but she’s not partial to being photographed. The picture at the top is one I took just two weeks ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When in pain – physical or mental – the two things I think most soothing are music (specifics vary by person and will be addressed in a later post) and the unconditional love of a pet. When I was fighting the cancer war, ensconsed at Glendale Adventist Hospital, they had a visiting pet program. I … Continue reading “Django”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-n-that"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}