Dog-Kissed Tears [Hardcover]

Description: It is 4:00 a.m. the day after Rosa died. I am wide-awake from a brief and troubled sleep. This book explores the loss of a dear friend and companion-a remarkable fifteen-year-old retriever named Rosa. Many people form deep attachments to their pets. Yet we wonder how to celebrate our friendships with them and how to grieve their death. Dog-Kissed Tears is a meditative memoir woven from life with Rosa. In stories that are funny, sad, moving, and honest, Lambert Zuidervaart links his attachment to his beloved dog and his love for human friends. Familiar songs help him trace his personal journey through the adoption, life, and death of a canine companion. As Lambert works through grief and longing for Rosa, he connects memories of childhood with self-discoveries in middle age. Dog-Kissed Tears weaves a lyrical narrative of friendship, loss, and healing. Its spiritual undercurrent is subtle but profound. Endorsements: This gentle threnody about losing a loved companion melts the reader's heart. The grieving eulogy of Rosa, Golden Labrador Retriever, whose welcoming, friendly spirit taught its adopted care-taker how to be comforted in losing parents and close friends to the adversary of Death is both intimately revealing and truly moving. No wonder God loves animals (Job 40-41), who can teach us humans to form a young heart open to all. --Calvin Seerveld Senior Member of Philosophical Aesthetics, emeritus Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto Humans have a complex relationship with animals. We construct a hierarchy with humans at the top blessed with intelligence and self-awareness. Animals exist at the bottom, deemed unintelligent, lacking self-awareness, and therefore subject to human control. Zuidervaart opens up such a construction through reflections on a powerful relationship with his dog, Rosa. A bond forged from love, acceptance, and openness freed Zuidervaart to embrace places within himself previously unexplored, thus deepeningló!