This is my family’s dog, Mackie. He was killed by something in the backyard at my mother and stepfather’s house tonight while I was there. He didn’t come inside when he was called — not even when three of us were calling and clapping and rattling around boxes of dog treats — and then my mother found him in the bushes. Mackie was a good dog when he wanted to be, an alpha male to his core, a great fetch player, and a loving companion to the late Rosie — and to us.
This is not a place usually dedicated to the non-human mammal, but I come from a family of dog-owners (sorry, cats), and really, if even in only a small way, the lives of our pets are a part of the story of our lives. Mackie was a larger than life figure in ours for the time we knew him and we will miss him.
McKinley “Mackie” Cornelius Fenning (1998-2009)
Photograph taken by the author, 2007.
a sense of face 
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