As a dog lover from a childhood filled with them, I simply have a hard time living without a dog around. I have to say "around" because I can no longer live "with" a dog. My allergies have gotten to a point where I can't breathe if I am close to a dog for very long. But with an acre of ground and a wooded pasture behind me, I need to have a dog in my back yard.

It's an excellent place for a dog. And there are so many critters --possums, raccoons, neighborhood cats, that come to visit, she keeps them from doing harm to our rural setting. (And I'm deathly allergic to cats. After about 20 minutes with one, I can't breathe at all.)

Now I know that many dog lovers will tell you that it's unkind to a dog to let them stay outdoors all of the time. But I was careful in what kind of dog I chose. I had a Siberian husky I raised from a pup to the age of 12, and I know that the breed can stand being outside, even in the Midwest winters. They love snow, the cold doesn't bother them at all, and all they need is a good sturdy doghouse full of straw to get out of the wind. They hate wind. Otherwise they will run and jump and play in the snow. They get excited at the first falling flakes of the season.

Our present resident Siberian, Spring, is a stray, and came to us two years ago in February. She is very small for a Siberian, and now has only one eye. Spring was brought to us by my niece, Stacie, a Lutheran pastor. She found the dog on a sidewalk outside a YWCA at night. The dog came right up to her out of a small group of people. Stacie knew I'd been looking for a small Siberian since I had to put my other one to sleep.

To make a long story short, I got her, but she'd had trauma to her right eye and had developed glaucoma in it. In the first three weeks we had her, she had to have the eye removed, had to be spayed, and had to have one of her canine teeth pulled because it was broken off and the nerve was just hanging there. My husband said he wouldn't blame her if she never got into a car with us again!

When we brought her into the house she avoided men like the plague. But now she loves everyone. But I have never seen her respond to anyone like a woman we met recently at our local library. The library sponsored a program which featured a "dog communicator."

Linda Thomas is a former English teacher who loves dogs, and found she could "communicate" with them. She spends time with your dog and you get to ask her 10 questions. She then gets responses from your dog. Linda sees "mental pictures" of what the dog is thinking about. She doesn't talk to them, she just sits quietly and thinks, and all of a sudden starts telling you things about your dog.

Linda told us our dog wasn't abused as we had suspected. Spring "told" her that she was being held in a large pen on a farm by an old man and a young man, and that it was muddy with no grass and there were other dogs there. But it wasn't a puppy mill as I had suspected. Spring climbed the fence and got out and she ran into a blue vehicle and broke her tooth and hit her eye. She also said her shoulder on that side hurt for a while but it was better now.

Spring said she likes it when my son's dogs come to visit, she loves it outside better than inside because then she can watch things, and she doesn't like the wind, but she doesn't get cold. When it's windy we never see her out of the dog house.

Sometimes she sits for hours at the gate into the pasture, watching what's going on. Occasionally we'll see deer and wild turkeys crossing the pasture to the cornfields.

Linda Thomas does this full time and is working with police departments on some cases. I don't know how you feel about this, but I was impressed. My husband is more than skeptical. But it was fun.

What Spring is to me is a good distraction from pain and depression. Just watching her in the yard makes me feel better. She moves so easily, and she jumps so high, that's partly why we named her Spring. The other thing was she came to us at a time when the winter seemed so long, and we named her Spring because we were glad she was there. My daughter actually named her, and I agreed the name fit.

When I was a child, I lived with the dogs my father brought home, mostly strays, some big, some little. Some died violently, cars, etc.; some of old age, others ran away. I have a little file of stories I wrote about them years ago, dog by dog. Dad could find strays anywhere, and he couldn't turn them down, especially if they were starving or abused.

I learned at an early age that dogs are a special and necessary part of life, a gift from God to make our lives better if we just let them. I know that dogs can lift your spirits, make you laugh, lick your tears away, and let you love them like no one else.

They will love you back in a non-judgemental, unconditional, understanding, kind way, or roughhouse with you if you need that. They will steal your socks, chew your furniture, dig holes in your yard, stand to help you get up off the ground, guard you from both real and imaginary threats, and make you feel safe.

I just can't live without having a dog around.