When It All Began

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Portrait of Jesse

There’s an exciting, encouraging moment when you first start a business—attracting your first public customer and making your first dollar. That moment for me came shortly after I lost my beloved cairn terrier, Josie.

Josie was my soul dog, and when I lost her to kidney disease, I was overcome with grief. An impromptu decision to build a dog memorial garden ended up being the best measure taken to move through the loss of my best friend.

And—wouldn’t you know—just as I finished planting the last flowering plant in the garden, my phone rang. Colleen began to explain that her dog, Jesse, was just diagnosed with lung cancer, and she needed a photo session—soon!

Jesse loved playing frisbee

Wow, I thought. I didn’t hesitate to share that I just lost my dog and had just been finishing up the memorial garden when she called. We cried together on the phone sharing our stories and the grief of losing our dogs.

I was a bit incredulous over the timing of the phone call with planting that last flower in the garden. It felt as though Josie, now running free and happy on the other side of the rainbow bridge, had something to do with that first phone call, and it comforted as well as encouraged me.

Jesse died less than three months after the photo session and these are some of the photos from his photo session with his family—the Crawfords.