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By Fr. Francis Pizzarelli

Father Frank

How many more mass shootings have to claim innocent lives before we have the courage to stand up for justice and common sense?

The rhetoric that has erupted since the Parkland shootings in Florida is reprehensible. Innocent lives murdered, hundreds of survivors suffering from PTSD and we still cannot move forward with common sense federal regulations to protect all of us as citizens without infringing on someone’s Second Amendment rights.

The articulate, dynamic students from Parkland have given clear voice to the real issues that must be addressed since the massacre — thorough background checks on all who purchase guns, a national registry for all guns and their owners, raising the age to 21 for the purchase of any gun with few exceptions, banning assault weapons with the exception for law enforcement and the military and developing a standardized mental health screening to flag those with potential mental health issues.

Our schools are vulnerable, but as a longtime educator and former school administrator, arming teachers and increasing police presence with weapons is not going to deter a mentally ill person from killing people, if he or she is determined to do that.

We need to be more efficient and effective at identifying students who demonstrate by behavior, school deportment and their writing that there is a real problem.

Every difficult student cannot merely be expelled from school. We need to work with those at-risk students. However, that really becomes a problem every time a school district is on austerity. The first people who are laid off are school social workers, psychologists, nurse teachers and other support staff that are critical in the time of crisis.

Instead of building up an armed security force, we should build up our support services so that they can effectively intervene with the growing number of students who are at risk.

After Parkland, all the politicians from the president on down have talked about doing more to strengthen mental health services. However, our own president has reduced funding from his budget to support mental health services. His opioid commission made substantial recommendations to fight this national health crisis, but to date he has not allocated a dime to support new treatment initiatives and support services for addicts and their families.

The young people from Parkland have sparked a powerful new conversation across our country that speaks beyond the issue of gun control and gun safety. Their courageous voices are challenging us to come together as a nation, urging us to work together to protect all life because it is sacred and fragile. We need to start practicing what we preach!

Divisive and demeaning rhetoric is not going to make America great again; only constructive action on the part of all Americans will. Every citizen who is of age must register to vote. We must do our homework and know what the real issues are all about and not allow ourselves to be brainwashed by political operatives. Our political process and system is broken and ineffective. It needs immediate surgery!

We need to urge the best of the best to run for public office. We must be sure that they are not connected or beholden to the insurance industry, the NRA, the unions, just to name a few powerful entities that seem to be indirectly controlling our nation and its policies.

As Gandhi once said, we must “be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Fr. Pizzarelli, SMM, LCSW-R, ACSW, DCSW, is the director of Hope House Ministries in Port Jefferson.

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By Barbara Beltrami

I’ve never kissed the Blarney Stone. I’ve never encountered a leprechaun (that I know of), but I have been known to raise a pint and mispronounce “Slainte!” And I do have some Irish blood in me, which must be the reason I adore corned beef and cabbage. In fact, at this time of year I buy a couple of corned beefs and freeze them so that I can use them throughout the year. While I am usually a traditionalist, every once in a while I go on a kick to reinvent and jazz up the ordinary and same old, same old, delicious as they might be.

And so it is this St. Patrick’s Day that I’ve come up with three variations on the corned beef and cabbage theme … a stew, a casserole and cabbage rolls. You can make them from scratch with fresh ingredients or from leftovers, but either way I think you’ll enjoy their welcome flavors and unique forms.

Corned Beef and Cabbage Stew

YIELD: Makes 4 to 6 servings

INGREDIENTS:

¼ cup vegetable oil

1 large onion, chopped

3 celery ribs, cleaned and chopped

4 carrots, peeled and diced

One 14-oz can diced tomatoes, with juice

3 cups beef broth

4 cups shredded cabbage

1 pound potatoes, peeled and diced

½ pound cooked corned beef, diced

1 bay leaf

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS: In a large pot, heat the oil, add the onion, celery and carrots and cook, stirring frequently, over medium heat about 5 to 7 minutes, until onion is slightly opaque. Add the tomatoes, broth, cabbage, potatoes and 3 to 4 cups water; bring to a boil, then cook, uncovered, over medium heat until everything is tender. Add corned beef, bay leaf salt and pepper; then cook 5 more minutes. Remove and discard bay leaf. Serve hot with pumpernickel or rye bread and a light red wine, sauvignon blanc wine or beer.

Corned Beef and Cabbage Casserole

YIELD: Makes 8 servings

INGREDIENTS:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

6 cups peeled cooked and sliced potatoes

4 cups cooked shredded cabbage

1 medium onion, diced and browned

½ pound corned beef, julienned

1½ cups shredded Swiss or Jarlsberg cheese

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

8 eggs

1½ cups milk

¾ teaspoon dry mustard

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 350 F. Coat inside of a 9- by 13-inch baking dish with oil. Line bottom of pan with half the potatoes, then half the cabbage, half the onions, half the corned beef and half the cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Repeat layers with remaining halves of ingredients, but start with cabbage and end with potatoes. Season again. In a medium bowl, combine the eggs, milk, mustard, salt and pepper and cayenne pepper. Beat until foamy. Pour mixture over layered ingredients in baking dish. Bake until knife inserted in center comes out clean, mixture is set and top is golden and bubbly, about one hour. Remove from oven, let sit for 15 minutes, then serve with a tomato salad and crusty rolls with butter.

Corned Beef Hash Cabbage Rolls

YIELD: Makes 6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS:

1 large head cabbage, core removed

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

3 cups finely diced cooked corned beef

3 cups finely diced cooked potatoes

1 large egg, beaten

3 cups beef broth

One 14-oz can petite diced tomatoes

Salt and pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 350 F. Carefully separate leaves from cabbage and in a large pot, steam until slightly wilted. Meanwhile in a small skillet, heat oil, add onion and sauté until golden. In a large bowl, combine the corned beef, potatoes, sautéed onion and egg. Lay a wilted cabbage leaf, inside facing up so it looks like a little dish, on a board or plate. Roll about 1½ to 2 teaspoons of corned beef mixture into a ball and lay in center of cabbage leaf. Tuck in ends and roll up. Place, seam side down, in a 9- by 13-inch nonreactive baking dish.

Repeat procedure with remaining cabbage leaves and mixture. Tuck any extra small cabbage leaves around cabbage rolls. Pour beef broth into baking dish; evenly distribute tomatoes and their juice over tops of cabbage rolls. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cover and cook 35 to 45 minutes until juice is bubbling and cabbage is tender. Place on a platter and spoon cooking liquid over and around cabbage rolls. Serve hot or warm with mustard, pickles, sharp cheese and bread.

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MEET B.G.!

B.G., aka Baby Girl, is a great cat who had a home until her owner passed away. Now she’s waiting at Kent Animal Shelter for her furever home. B.G. is confused because she doesn’t understand what happened to the home she knew for the last four years. Please come fall in love with her and be the one to show her that life can be good again! Baby Girl comes spayed, microchipped and up to date on all her vaccines.

Kent Animal Shelter is located at 2259 River Road in Calverton. The adoption center is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day. For more information on B.G. and other adoptable pets at Kent, visit www.kentanimalshelter.com or call 631-727-5731.

Update: B.G. has been adopted!

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Photo by Corinne Conover

Homage to Conscience

By Corinne Conover

I was truly blessed to live 12 wonderful years with great memories and milestones in Strong’s Neck. I wrote this non-fiction piece as a heartfelt thank you to a place that has so much enriched history and beautiful landscapes that, combined with my loving parents and sister, was “home.” Our new ventures take us to Queens and Manhattan. Thank you for reading.

Photo by Corinne Conover

This would be my last time at my “other home.” The home where we played volleyball in the rain — countless barbecues, bike rides around Conscience Point and round the bend to the church steeple, carriage house and the old tavern where George Washington would go to when he would visit, which now is a historic home.

The home where we would visit a secret garden at Avalon, where a wealthy father dedicated a park with hiking, and trails in loving memory to his young son who passed away. Endless kayaking trips with me and dad and Sonny, even after years later, when the kayaks finally gave in and deflated. We had to float back home with our arms spread out. Dad said, “We were penguins that day.”

I offered to take my sister’s dog Foster on the last day for a nice walk, just him and me. We made it to Conscience Point. Gazed at the sun starting to set. The tall tree overlooking the inlet to the ocean and headed to the shoreline. There, before us, sat hundreds of colored rocks from seaweed, salt and growth. And, thought “Who am I, to choose one rock that no longer gets to stay here in its natural state?” It is a lot similar to how I feel of the natural inward beauty that some people exude in life with a conscience. So, I left the rock in its place. “Home.” Looked up at the setting sun. Thanked God and solemnly said … Goodbye.

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It’s got great pictures and is good news. As a result, it’s a story heard around the world.

Back in 2015, Heather Lynch, an associate professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, started the tedious yet important job of counting Adélie penguins in a place with a well-earned name: the Danger Islands. This chain of nine Antarctic islands is surrounded by rocks and potentially ship-trapping ice.

These parameters present a picture-perfect paradise for Adélie penguins, who live, breed, eat, squawk and poop there — more on that in a moment. Armed with drones that fly over these islands and working with collaborators from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution at Oxford University in England and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Lynch and others counted these flightless birds. The final number came to an astounding 1.5 million.

Wait, but how could a planet so well covered by satellite imagery, where you can see your car in your driveway through online apps, not know about a colony so large that it’s called a supercolony?

We kind of knew that they lived there, although not in such staggering numbers, when a plane flew overhead in 1957. It wasn’t until more recently, however, that Lynch and Mathew Schwaller from NASA in Greenbelt, Maryland, studied satellite images from guano stains — this is where the poop comes in — that they had an idea of the enormity of a population of penguins that would make Mr. Popper proud.

News outlets, including TBR News Media, couldn’t get enough of the story, grabbing the pictures, getting Lynch and her colleagues on the phone and learning about the creatures.

Publications of all political stripes, from The New York Times to CNN, to The Wall Street Journal to Breitbart News have all covered it.

“It’s a good news story,” said Lynch. “People latched onto that.”

Lynch said she spoke directly with 12 or more journalists. At the same time, about 360 stories mentioned Stony Brook and penguins.

Some of the coverage has included mistakes. One report, for example, had spectacular visuals. The narrative, however, suggested the Danger Islands was a hotspot for penguins because the location has been left undisturbed by people.

“That’s not what I said,” she said. “The question was, ‘Why hadn’t we discovered them before?’ The answer was because this is not an area where people go.”

That, she said, is not the same as suggesting that the penguins flourished because humans haven’t been there. It only means we didn’t know about them because visiting the islands is so hazardous.

Another outlet suggested that the Adélie penguins were on the verge of extinction. Not only is that inaccurate, but the population has been growing, as previous research from Lynch indicated.

While that may not fit a simple climate-change narrative, it supports the concept of a warming world.

To simplify the message, the climate-change community has made a link between population and climate, which is “impossible to break,” she said, even though it’s also inaccurate.

There is this “kind of tug of war between the scientists dealing with nuance and detail, and the conversation community,” she said. They don’t need to be at odds, she added.

Indeed, this colony thrives because the Danger Islands hasn’t increased in temperature at the same rate as other parts of the Antarctic.

The media spotlight taught her a few lessons.

For starters, in addition to the talking points she had during her interactions, she would include bullet points in the negative, to make it clear what the researchers aren’t saying.

Ultimately, however, Lynch recognizes the value of the photos.

“The drone footage is amazing and stunning,” she said. She gives credit to the Woods Hole staff. “If we didn’t have pictures” the story would likely not have received such extensive coverage.

What’s the lesson? From now on, she said, “I’ll think about the visuals in advance, if I want the attention.”

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Adélie penguins jump off an iceberg of one of the Danger Islands. Photo by Rachel Herman from Stony Brook University/ Louisiana State University

By Daniel Dunaief

In October of 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, people imagined that satellites hovering over their heads could see everything and anything down below. Indeed, in the early days, some Americans rushed to close their blinds, hoping the Kremlin couldn’t see what they might be eating for dinner or watching on TV.

Satellites today collect such a wealth of information about the world below that it’s often not easy to analyze and interpret it.

That’s the case with the Danger Islands in the Antarctic. Difficult for people to approach by boat because of treacherous rocks around the islands and sea ice that might trap a ship, these islands are home to a super colony of Adélie penguins that number 1.5 million.

Nesting Adelie penguins. Photo by Michael Polito from Louisiana State University

This discovery of birds that were photographed in a reconnaissance plane in 1957 but haven’t been studied or counted since “highlights the ultimate challenge of drinking from the firehose of satellite-based information,” said Heather Lynch, an associate professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University and a co-author on a Scientific Reports publication announcing the discovery of these supernumerary waterfowl.

Adélie penguins are often linked to the narrative about climate change. Lynch said finding this large colony confirms what researchers knew about Adélie biology. In West Antarctic, it is warming and the population is declining. On the eastern side, it’s colder and icier, which are conditions more suited for Adélie survival. The Danger Islands are just over the edge of those distinct regions, on the eastern side, where it is still cold and icy.

A population discovery of this size has implications for management policies. At this point, different groups are designing management strategies for both sides of the peninsula. A German delegation is leading the work for a marine protected area on the east side. An Argentinian team is leading the western delegation.

Adelie penguins on sea ice next to Comb Island. Photo by Michael Polito, Louisiana State University

This discovery supports the MPA proposal, explained Mercedes Santos, a researcher from the Instituto Antártico Argentino and a co-convener of the Domain 1 MPA Expert Group. The MPA proposal was introduced in 2017 and is under discussion in the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, where the United States is one of 25 members.

Said Santos in a recent email, “This publication will help us to show the importance of the area for protection, considering that decisions should be made [with the] best available information.” The location of the Danger Islands protects it from the strongest effects of climate change, as the archipelago is in a buffer zone between areas that are experiencing warming and those where the climate remains consistent over longer periods of time.

Whales and other mammals that eat krill create an unknown factor in developing fisheries plans. While penguins spend considerable time above water and are easier to monitor and count, the population of whales remains more of a mystery.

Heather Lynch with a penguin. Photo from Heather Lynch

Lynch said the more she studies penguins, the more skeptical she is that they can “stand in” as ecosystem indicators. Their populations tend to be variable. While it would be simpler to count penguins as a way to measure ecosystem dynamics, researchers also need to track populations of other key species, such as whales, she suggested. Humpback whales are “in competition with penguins for prey resources,” Lynch said.

The penguin data is “one piece of information for one species,” but MPAs are concerned with the food web for the entire region, which also includes crabeater seals. For the penguin population study, Lynch recruited members of her lab to contribute to the process of counting the penguins manually. “I figured I should do my fair share,” she said, of work she describes as “painstaking.” Indeed, Lynch and her students counted over 280,000 penguins by hand. She and her team used the hand counting effort to confirm the numbers generated by the computer algorithm.

“The counting was done to make sure the computer was doing its job well,” she said. She also wanted to characterize the errors of this process as all census counts come with errors and suggested that the future of this type of work is with computer vision.

Lynch appreciated the work of numerous collaborators to count this super colony. Even before scientists trekked out to the field to count these black and white birds, she and Matthew Schwaller from NASA studied guano stains on the Danger Islands in 2015 using existing NASA images.

The scientific team at Heroina Island in Antarctica. Photo by Alex Borowicz, Stony Brook University

This penguin team included Tom Hart from Oxford University and Michael Polito from Louisiana State University, who have collaborated in the field for years, so it was “natural that we would work together to try and execute an expedition.” Stephanie Jenouvrier, a seabird ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, has considerable expertise in the modeling side, especially with the climate; and Hanumant Singh, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University has experience using drones in remote areas, Lynch said.

The penguins on the Danger Islands react to the presence of humans in a similar way to the ones elsewhere throughout the Antarctic. The birds generally don’t like creatures that are taller than they are, in part because they fear skuas, which are larger predatory birds that work together to steal an egg off a nest. Counting the penguins requires the researchers to stand, but when the scientists sit on the ground, the penguins “will approach you. You have to make sure you’re short enough.”

Lynch would like to understand the dynamics of penguin nest choices that play out over generations. She’s hoping to use a snapshot of the layout of the nests to determine how a population is changing. Ideally, she’d like to “look at a penguin colony to see whether it’s healthy and declining.” She believes she is getting close.

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If there were ever a reason needed for obese patients to lose weight, treating atrial fibrillation should be on the top of the list. Stock photo
Medications treat rate or rhythm or prevent strokes

By David Dunaief, M.D

Dr. David Dunaief

Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia, an abnormal or irregular heartbeat, found in the U.S. Unfortunately, it can be very complicated to treat. Though there are several options, including medications and invasive procedures, it mostly boils down to symptomatic treatment rather than treating or reversing underlying causes.

What is AFib? It is an electrical malfunction that affects the atria, the two upper chambers of the heart, causing them to beat “irregularly irregular.” This means there is no set pattern that affects the rhythm and potentially causes a rapid heart rate. The result of this may be insufficient blood supply throughout the body.

Complications that may occur can be severely debilitating, such as stroke or even death. AFib’s prevalence is expected to more than double by 2030 (1). Risk factors include age (the older we get, the higher the probability), obesity, high blood pressure, premature atrial contractions and diabetes.

AFib is not always symptomatic; however, when it is, symptoms include shortness of breath, chest discomfort, light-headedness, fatigue and confusion. This arrhythmia can be diagnosed by electrocardiogram, but more likely with a 24-hour Holter monitor. The difficulty in diagnosing AFib sometimes is that it can be intermittent.

There may be a better way to diagnose AFib. In a study, the Zio patch, worn for 14 days, was more likely to show arrhythmia than a 24-hour Holter monitor (2). The Zio patch is a waterproof adhesive patch on the chest, worn like a Band-Aid, with one ECG lead. While 50 percent of patients found the Holter monitor to be unobtrusive, almost all patients found the Zio patch comfortable.

There are two main types of AFib, paroxysmal and persistent. Paroxysmal is acute, or sudden, and lasts for less than seven days, usually less than 24 hours. It tends to occur with greater frequency over time, but comes and goes. Persistent AFib is when it continues past seven days (3). AFib is a progressive disease, meaning it only gets worse, especially without treatment.

Medications are meant to treat either the rate or rhythm or prevent strokes from occurring. Those that treat rate include beta blockers, like metoprolol, and calcium channel blockers, such as diltiazem (Cardizem). Examples of medications that treat rhythm are amiodarone and sotalol. Then there are anticoagulants that are meant to prevent stroke, such as warfarin and some newer medications, dabigatran (Pradaxa), rivaroxaban (Xarelto) and apixaban (Eliquis). The newer anticoagulants are easier to administer but may have higher bleeding risks, in some circumstances with no antidote.

There is also ablation, an invasive procedure that requires threading a catheter through an artery, usually the femoral artery located in the groin, to reach the heart. In one type of ablation, the inappropriate nodes firing in the walls of the atria are ablated, or destroyed, using radiofrequency. This procedure causes scarring of atrial tissue. When successful, patients may no longer need medication.

Premature atrial contractions

Premature atrial contractions, abnormal extra beats that occur in the atrium, may be a predictor of atrial fibrillation. In a study, PACs alone, when compared to the Framingham Heart Study AFib risk algorithm (a conglomeration of risk factors that excludes PACs) resulted in higher risk of AFib (4). When there were more than 32 abnormal beats/hour, there was a significantly greater risk of AFib after 15 years of PACs. When taken together, PACs and the Framingham model were able to predict AFib risk better at 10 years out as well. Also, when the number of PACs doubled overall in patients, there was a 17 percent increased risk of AFib.

The role of obesity

There is good news and bad news with obesity in regards to AFib. Let’s first talk about the bad news. In studies, those who are obese are at significantly increased risk. In the Framingham Heart Study, the risk of developing AFib was 52 percent greater in men who were obese and 46 percent greater in women who were obese when compared to those of normal weight (5). Obesity is defined as a body mass index >30 kg/m², and normal weight as a BMI <25 kg/m². There were over 5,000 participants in this study with a follow-up of 13 years. The Danish Diet, Cancer and Health Study reinforces these results by showing that obese men were at a greater than twofold increased risk of developing AFib, and obese women were at a twofold increased risk (6).

Now the good news: Weight loss may help reduce the frequency of AFib episodes. That’s right; weight loss could be a simple treatment for this very dangerous arrhythmia. In a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard of studies, those in the intervention group lost significantly more weight, 14 kg (32 pounds) versus 3.6 kg (eight pounds), and saw a significant reduction in atrial fibrillation severity score compared to those in the control group (7). There were 150 patients involved in the study.

An AFSS includes duration, severity and frequency of atrial fibrillation. All three components in the AFSS were reduced in the intervention group compared to the control group. There was a 692-minute decrease in the time spent in AFib over 12 months in the intervention arm, whereas there was a 419-minute increase in the time in AFib in the control group. These results are potentially very powerful; this is the first study to demonstrate that managing risk factors may actually help manage the disease.

Caffeine

According to a meta-analysis (a group of six population-based studies) done in China, caffeine does not increase, and may even decrease, the risk of AFib (8). The study did not reach statistical significance. The authors surmised that drinking coffee on a regular basis may be beneficial because caffeine has antifibrosis properties. Fibrosis is the occurrence of excess fibrous tissue, in this case, in the atria, which most likely will have deleterious effects. Atrial fibrosis could be a preliminary contributing step to AFib. Since these were population-based studies, only an association can be made with this discovery, rather than a hard and fast link. Still, this is a surprising result.

However, in those who already have AFib, it seems that caffeine may exacerbate the frequency of symptomatic occurrences, at least anecdotally. With my patients, when we reduce or discontinue substances that have caffeine, such as coffee, tea and chocolate, the number of episodes of AFib seems to decline. I have also heard similar stories from my colleagues and their patients. So, think twice before running out and getting a cup of coffee if you have AFib. What we really need are randomized controlled studies done in patients with AFib, comparing people who consume caffeine regularly to those who have decreased or discontinued the substance.

The bottom line is this: If there were ever a reason needed for obese patients to lose weight, treating atrial fibrillation should be on the top of the list, especially since it is such a dangerous disease with potentially severe complications.

References:

(1) Am J Cardiol. 2013 Oct. 15;112:1142-1147. (2) Am J Med. 2014 Jan.;127:95.e11-7. (3) Uptodate.com. (4) Ann Intern Med. 2013;159:721-728. (5) JAMA. 2004;292:2471-2477. (6) Am J Med. 2005;118:489-495. (7) JAMA. 2013;310:2050-2060. (8) Canadian J Cardiol online. 2014 Jan. 6.

Dr. Dunaief is a speaker, author and local lifestyle medicine physician focusing on the integration of medicine, nutrition, fitness and stress management. For further information, visit www.medicalcompassmd.com or consult your personal physician.

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ON THE FENCE

Wendy Mercier of Rocky Point recently captured this image of a male cardinal hanging out on a fence in her backyard using a Cannon Powershot. During winter, the songbird will fluff up his down feathers in order to trap warm air next to his body and keep cold air from reaching his body.

Send your Photo of the Week to [email protected].

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People sometimes ask me if I am going to get another dog. Even people I don’t really know have stopped me in the supermarket or the post office to ask. They know about my dog, Teddy, since I have written about him, described his antics and, at the end, the pain of losing him. Those who ask probably have pets of their own, and they understand the deep relationship we humans have with our animals. They also know what is coming for them because beloved pets die. We are lucky if they keep us company on our journey through life for a decade and a half. And we mourn them as we would mourn the death of any beloved family member.

Initially we wouldn’t consider replacing him. Every night, when we arrived home and opened the front door there was no four-legged furry bundle fishtailing with joy to welcome us. The house was just dark and empty. We needed time to grieve. “Just get another dog,” said those who didn’t understand that dogs are not like widgets, one replaceable with another.

So we went through the spring and didn’t see him sniffing at the crocuses and daffodils as if in wonder at how they had gotten there. After all, they hadn’t been there yesterday. In summer, he wasn’t here to dash across the sand and fling himself into the water for an instant cool-down. As the fall came and the beach grass turned russet and gold, he did not run happily along the beach with us, perfectly camouflaged by nature’s backdrop. And this winter, with the first snow, he was not here to roll ecstatically on his back and make snow angels on the front lawn.

It’s coming up on a year now since we have been without a dog. It has also occurred to us that no one has had to get up early to walk the dog on the weekends. We haven’t had to go out in the wind and rain, or the cold and dark for that last walk of the night. There were no elaborate plans that needed to be made for dog care when we left for vacation or a weekend away from home. We didn’t need to dash to the vet for an emerging “hot spot” or note the time on the calendar for a rabies shot. There has not been any sudden despoiling on the most treasured rug in the house. And we have not had to deal with the frantic teething that puts clothing and window sills at risk as a new puppy settles in.

We have thought briefly of different possibilities. We have a friend who has a golden retriever puppy named Chewy with almost identical coloring and inquisitiveness as Teddy, and we have offered our services as sometime babysitters. So far we have done so once. After loving up the pup, the rest was just work and it wasn’t the same. Substitute dogs are like substitute teachers: Happy to have them come and happy to see them go.

It has been 45 years since I have been without a dog in the house, and there is a void that won’t go away. One of my sons and daughters-in-law are thinking of getting a dog. If so, they would come often to visit and bring the dog. Would that replace what is missing? I have my doubts. That would just mean more work without the primary connection.

So profound is that connection that the latest trend in employee benefits for large corporations is “pawternity leave.” That means a couple of days paid time off for an employee to bond with a new four-legged family member or to mourn the death of a beloved pet. Some companies are even encouraging their staffers to bring their pets with them to the office when at work.

So, will we get another dog? There have been four dogs sequentially in my life already, and there is certainly room for more. I just don’t know if l can bear the loss of yet another. As my mother used to say, “We’ll see.”

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