Rocky my rip roarer, my wobbly shadow, my snorter, my snarfler, my crocodile snack snapper, my loyal sidekick, my trooper, my good spirit, my stony-faced, black-eyed people scarer, my house wrecker, my rescue, my sleep depriver, my skin rasher, my welcome home every day, my sidewalk pee decorator, my skunk chaser, my eager good morning, my happy wagger, my laughter, my great and constant companion, I will always hold you near and I will always miss you.

Goodbye Rocky, my dear dear dog. May you sleep well and deep and in the warm arms of eternity keep.

Zack spent a cold winter's night tied to a tree, note pinned to his collar asking any passerby to take him to Toronto Animal Services or Toronto Humane Society. Some kind soul brought him to TAS South the next day.

(I wrote this on Monday. Looks like Reggie got adopted two days ago!)

Reggie's been at Toronto Animal Services South for too long now so I decided to take another photo of him, maybe bring him some better luck. Reggie can be a bit choosy about his dog companions but he's great with people so it's strange that no one has given him a chance yet.

For his photo session on Sunday, I took him to a little fenced in area and let him off leash.

Despite being malnourished, Cooper, a Collie mix, has some real zest for life. Energetic, intelligent, gregarious - he won't be long without a home.

Dallas may look like a Rottweiler but secretly she wants to be a purse dog.

I round the corner of my block with Rocky. We're on our after dinner walk. Rocky's on prednisone now which makes him much more thirsty than normal and also much hungrier so he's constantly got his nose to the ground whenever we're outside, snarfling for bits of food.

Rocky catches some scent and sticks his head into the bushes. Too late, I pull him back out and he's already got something in his mouth, chewing. I'm about to go in after it before he can gulp it down but then he crouches back and I think maybe he's just backing up but instead he starts to take a dump.

He's chewing on his new found treat and crapping on the sidewalk and looking up at me and he might as well be saying, "What? I'm multitasking."

From behind me, a little girl and her mom turn the corner. They stop. The little girl goes, "Mommy, lookadoggie."

Oh dear God, I think.

"CanIpethim?" little girl asks.

I can feel mom's eyes focusing in the dark, trying to figure out what's going on. Rocky looks at them. He finishes chewing and gulps and at the same time another large turd drops out of his ass and falls beside the other two turds already deposited on the sidewalk.

"Oh," mom says. "I think we should cross the street." They do so. The little girl looks back at Rocky, disappointed.

I pull out the plastic bags, clean up after my dog, vacate the scene.

When Jorja first came into Toronto Animal Services South, she was only 80 pounds and looked skeletal. Check out the beautiful girl now.

From Jorja's new owner:

Jorja is now 110 lbs and still eating really well without any diarrhea. She loves to play. I’ve enrolled her and I in obedience classes which we will be starting very soon. Here are some pictures of her.

I lean back and close my eyes when I realize I've been focused on the same spot on the monitor for I don't know how long. These eyes have got to last me several more decades so I better not burn them out too soon. I decide to go for a washroom break. I walk past all the stalls, staring at the tops of people's heads, at their desk plants and posters and toys. In the washroom, someone is in one of the stalls having a conversation on his cell phone and I think to myself that there should be an app which tells the caller on the other end of the line if the person he's talking to is taking a crap - like a little alarm that goes off and a synthesized voice that goes, "WARNING WARNING. YOU ARE CURRENTLY TALKING TO SOMEONE TAKING A CRAP." I think I could get rich selling an app like that.

Back at my desk, I open up a bunch of please help this dog emails from a high kill shelter in the States and there are photos attached and I look at their faces behind kennel doors, staring out at me like there might be some hope. I flip over to the online news and Japan is falling apart and drowning. Cars, ships, houses floating by like plastic toys in a bathtub, people in shock, not yet crying, not yet mourning. I move the mouse to go back to my work screen and my computer freezes. I wait for a couple of minutes in case it decides to start working again. I look out the window. The weather reporter on the radio this morning had said the precipitation would stop. It hasn't. It's snowing now.

I restart the frozen computer, throwing away at least half an hours work. I work until lunch. I go out, buy some soup, come back into the building. I wait at the elevator. The elevator doors open. Three men inside. One is older, in his fifties, handsomely dressed in a suit and fitted 3/4 length wool coat. Head full of hair with elegant grey strands as if placed there by a designer, combed back with pommade. Well manicured but not too well manicured. Just rough enough to not be misconstrued.

With him, attentive to him, are two younger men, in their twenties, baggy jeans, one with a sports team jersey, the other, a red sweatshirt, both in over sized, stuffed winter jackets.

The two young men are listening to what the older man is saying so it's not that any of us are being rude, but they don't acknowledge me with a greeting and I don't acknowledge them with one.

They exit the elevator. I enter. The doors start to close and as the three men walk away I hear a snippet of what the older man is saying:

" ... and for a young black man, he wasn't too out of control."

The younger men snort.

I'm back at my desk, drinking the soup, browsing Facebook. Somebody's bored at home being sick. Somebody's happy about last night's game. Somebody has a new puppy. Somebody needs to find homes for puppies. Somebody needs signatures for a petition. Somebody is angry at the world for not being vegan enough. Somebody is angry at the world for not being considerate enough. Somebody is angry at the world. I click off Facebook and go back to my emails. I look again at the pictures of the dogs in their kennels. The emails are a week old so the dogs are probably dead by now.

Suddenly, I am angry at the world. I look outside and it's raining and I know I'm going to have to ride home in that freezing rain and I'm angry at the weather. I'm angry at people who make casually racist comments on the elevator. I'm angry at people who converse while shitting. I'm angry at my soup for not being as good as it was yesterday. I'm angry at my computer for crashing. I'm angry that I'm going to lose an hour this weekend because of daylight savings. I'm angry that I have to bear witness again to the slow death of my dog. I'm angry at the day for not being over. I'm angry at being angry and maybe I should just get on Facebook and yell at people over and over and over again like some self-righteous prick and I'm watching the black water crawl across a field, drowning everything in its path or carrying everything away and I see the fires burning and the buildings collapsing. I see an airport surrounded by a dark lake. I see a city being washed away. I see the nuclear reactors at risk. I see the death toll rising. I see the faces of the people not yet mourning and yet the mourning will come.

I'm sitting in my comfortable chair in my comfortable office in a comfortable building with a little rain sprinkling outside. The anger subsides and for a moment there is nothing.