Wolfgang von Skeptik. . .

. . .has a beautifully written piece on his love of dogs in general, and two dogs in particular. I've got an almost sickening weakness for dogs, myself, so I found it moving. Anyone who has both a heart and a dog will identify with this one.

"The next several days all I did was search for LeeRoy. I went back to the sand pit again and again but found no new traces of him. I literally drove hundreds of miles on the lower-altitude logging roads, stopping every five minutes or so to call his name. Finally, resigned to his loss and saddened beyond words, I distracted myself from grief by indulging my normal curiosity about the elevation of the remaining snow: it was early April. I drove my yellow truck up the mountain’s main logging road until I reached the point where the snow pack barred my way. It was near the crest. The view – the dark dense green of the tall second-growth firs of the interior forest partially obscured by thick gray streamers of fog or snow-mist – was impressive enough I set the handbrake and dismounted to see it all the better. And there in the snow almost under my truck, perhaps two dozen road-miles south of the abandoned sandpit and maybe 2000 feet above it, was a single set of dog tracks. Big dog tracks."

It's not his most recent piece, but it was one I particularly liked. Skeptik's most recent piece, on how the lack of attention to poverty in the presidential campaign, can be found here.