Izzy is a spirit dog, one of those wonderful creatures who comes out of nowhere and enters the lives of humans when they need it. He has had a challenging life. He lived outside on a farm for some years and came to me late in life. He spent his days running alongside a farm fence, so much so that there was a foot-deep trench where he circled and circled. He was a nightmare for months before settling down, for reasons I’m not sure I will ever understand. I remember him running off up the hill when he first saw donkeys and my pursuit of him in the truck with Rose. Five miles away Izzy was still running, and he didn’t stop until I let Rose out of the truck and she ran him down. Today he is Mr. Cool, but it took him a long time to get used to a house and a live among people and sounds.

I do not know how old he is. Almost unaccountably, he entered hospice work as Washington County’s first canine hospice volunteer when I joined. At a crossroads in my life, we came together and drove hundreds of miles all over the county and into the Adirondacks to do hospice work. Izzy seemed to be born to it and I will never forget the people he helped leave the world in dignity and affection.

The wonderful thing about hospice work is that you help people at the edge of life. The difficult thing about hospice work is that all of the people you come to know and love die. The experience led to a book – “Izzy and Lenore,” and to my photography. Hospice opened me up, and Izzy and I started taking photos on our hospice runs, inside the homes we were visiting and out.  I paused in my hospice volunteer work because it is difficult to write about other things when you are doing hospice work, and also because Izzy and I were both feeling the loss. He was popular and we were seeing a lot of people. He became increasingly deflated, even disoriented after the people we were seeing died.

I don’t know exactly how old Izzy is, but he is leading a lovely and peaceful life.  And a good one. We do some hospice work unofficially – people call us from time to time to see friends or relatives at the edge of life – and we go. He spends many afternoons with Maria in the Studio Barn and he loves to curl up in corners and keep her company while Frieda is guarding me. Izzy is a wonderful dog, a remarkably loving and easy creature. He is not doing hospice work now, but he is doing what he loves – walking in the woods, riding around with me while I take photos, helping Maria do her work. He loves people, women especially and loves to end up in their laps.  I stopped taking Izzy to readings because people admiring him disrupted the readings and he got nippy around some children who got excited around him.

The hospice work with Izzy was transformative, some of the most important and memorable time in my life. I believe it began the process of opening me up as a human being, and was the beginning of a meaningful spiritual life. Izzy is welcome to rest her for as long as he wishes, which I expect will be a long time. He is in great health, loves to chase frisbees,ride in the car, run alongside the ATV.