DOGKISSES A Personal Blog about Life, Health and Healing, Nature, Love, and Dogs.

Hello.  I’m Michelle, and DOGKISSES is my personal blog.

I named this blog after my sweet dog, Ruthie Mae. Ruthie was my tender heart. She was also the softest dog I ever petted. I used to say one pet was never enough. Like potato chips! You had to have more!

She crossed Rainbow Bridge in 2015.  There’s a place in my heart where her love lives forever.

Ruthie offered me the slightest little kisses on my arm, each time I reached into her bag of food. 

Ruthie’s little kisses reminded me of snowflakes landing ever so gently on my skin, melting my heart.  

I’ve written about several subjects in this blog.  Writing has been a hobby for a long time and also, a way to clear my mind.  

“You should write about your life,” many friends have suggested to me over the years.

My life has most certainly been rich in colors and characters. Sometimes, a regular day out turns into hours of laughter with a friend later on. You just never know who you might meet and what all might be said or done. Then, there’s the bigger parts of life. The parts made of stuff that’s hard to deal with. Those parts of my life most likely led me to ink on paper.  

My grandma taught me to write letters when I was about eight years old. My mother bought me a desk and a diary in early middle school.  I still have that desk.  

I’ve always loved dogs.  My dad raised beagles after we moved to his home town in North Carolina when I was seven years old.  We called them rabbit dogs.  

Jack, who was very cute and a good hunter, was my dad’s last dog.  Daddy’s tombstone has a carving of a man with his hunting dog and a gun.  Daddy left us too soon.  He was barely sixty.  

After living with chronic health conditions for many years, I have a deeper appreciation of a dog’s unconditional love and companionship. 

Dogs are good medicine. 

I understand better now why my dad loved his dogs.  He liked sitting in the woods, listening to them bay.  He liked the end, when Jack got a rabbit, but most of the time, he came home empty-handed.

“It ain’t as much about getting a rabbit, as it is about me having time to myself,” he told me.  “I like hearing ’em go after one.”  He smiled a lot when he talked about his dogs. 

As I update this page in June of 2026, my mother is ninety-one.  Mother likes my dog, Bella, but she has never been a person who enjoys dogs inside the house.  I guess I’m more like my dad that way.  Before he passed on, he once laughed while showing me pictures of his dogs and flowers.  He remarked that I probably thought he was silly to do that, but I didn’t think so.  Now, I realize I am the same.  

I have a grown son and am a very proud Mom.  Becoming a Mother is the best thing that’s ever happened in my life.

Bella is the pretty little dog in my life now. She’s eight years old (2026).

I adopted her through a prison program, “A New Leash on Life,” in Spindale, North Carolina. An inmate lived with Bella 24/7 and trained her each day before I met her. She’s well mannered almost all of the time! She has a large space in both my son’s and my heart. Everyone likes Bella!

 CURRENTLY IN PROCESS OF UPDATING THIS PAGE.

Bella is a little diva. Free was simply free. Tiny was funny. Ruthie was a hunting dog with just the right amount of Lab to make her incredibly loving.  She hunted squirrels and I chased after her.  She once killed a big rat and when we found a black snake in our house, she wanted to kill that too. Mostly, Ruthie hunted insects! I called her an Egyptian Beetlehound since her eyes reminded me of Cleopatra.

Dogs are teachers.  

Dogs have so much to offer and when I listen, I can hear their wisdom.  They sure do know how to live.

In January, 2013, we parted with our dear friend, Tiny, the very handsome fellow in the image (left). 

Tiny was my son’s dog, so he was my grand-dog 🙂

He was the best friend in the world to my son.  Tiny could communicate with me telepathically when my son needed me.  He was an amazing animal!

Tiny lived twelve years!  That’s a pretty good life for a big dog, and Tiny boy was a big dog, sort of.

We love you Tiny!

Free, (the pretty black lab/collie pictured below), was our first family dog.  I have lots of “Free” stories and awesome memories of her.  She made our small family bigger.  When she got tall enough, she’d always get in on our hugs.  My son and I loved that.  We adored her.

My son picked Free out of a litter at the Apple festival on Franklin street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Free was like a sister to my son.  She was mostly Lab mixed with Border Collie.  She was smart! 

Free lived from 1993 to 2006.  What a sad time it was when we had to let her go, but Free left me with a heart full of loving happy memories.  She wrote me a few poems in her later years.

 

Thanks for visiting my blog, DOGKISSES, feel free to leave me your thoughts.  Your emails are never published.

You may also visit my photo-nature blog, Green Healing Notes (http://greenhealinggirl.wordpress.com/).

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If you would like to use an image or any part of this blog for Non-Commercial purposes, please honor a Creative Commons Copyright and Share Alike, giving a clear link back to Michelle and/or Dogkisses’s Blog @ https://dogkisses.wordpress.com/.

Thank you!

Below: Links to posts by Michelle.

• Pain in fibromyalgia
• Homeless with Dog (A favorite post)
  
• Hope Grows in the Garden
• Green Healing ~ Good Greens! (Green Healing Notes)