Better to have loved and lost

On the D For Dog forum, in Prince's goodbye thread, Graham says:

It's so sad in many ways, that we all seem to have some experience of the gravity of such a loss - and many of us very recently.

It got me thinking.

Loss and grief are the price we pay for opening ourselves to love, but love is it's own reward. The trick is to not close your heart because of the pain of loss, but to hold on to the memory of love and so allow it into your heart again.

To quote Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

So many people say silly things like "I'll never love again" or "there'll never be another ". They're right about the second one - there will never be another Prince, or Cleo, or Timmy, or Lady or (in my case) Duke, or Nisse - but each dog, and therefore each love is different. Some people ridicule the love that can exist between owners and their pets and think that such owners are somehow warped, and that that love could be better 'spent'. Personally, I think that the more you open your heart, the more love you find that you have to give, and the more you receive in return. In fact, pets are so good at opening people's hearts and healing their minds that Animal Assisted Therapy is becoming more and more popular and achieving amazing results.

I would turn what Graham's said around - the fact that so many of us have experienced the gravity of such a loss, although painful, shows that we can love. It shows that our hearts haven't hardened, in spite of the terrible things that are on the TV and the internet daily. That gives me hope.

How scary is this???

A member of the D For Dog forum has posted this very scary link. It gives a list of 75 breeds of dog which are banned in some states of the US. It not only includes the usual suspects - Staffie, Mastiff, EBT (all of which are prone to whine and drop at your feet, paws in air, for a belly rub) - but also Fox Terrier, Airedale Terrier, Springer Spaniel, Newfoundland!!
Newfoundlands are bred to rescue humans, for goodness sake!! I've never heard of anyone being savaged by one - you're more likely to get accidentally sat on or drooled on... and as for the Fox and Airedale terriers - why them and not the JRT? Because they can be vicious too - I mean, yes at one end of the spectrum we have Mollie, who will just sit and look bemused as a small child attempts to pull her leg off, but at the other end there are JRTs who will bite you just because you looked at them funny. Or rather, because you looked at them at all. Or because you happened to walk somewhere within half a mile of them and your trouser leg looked tasty. And yes, I speak from personal experience here.
I'm sure my friend Helena will be mortified to learn that her dogs are banned in the parts of the US, possibly in the very states that she once lived in.
It's madness, utter madness - politicians scrambling to do something, anything to make it look like they've got control of the situation - a situation, incidentally which only exists in newspapers and on television. Wouldn't it be better to bring in compulsory dog licensing, chipping/tattooing and socialisation/obedience? Oh no, that would be a sensible thing to do, wouldn't it...