Best we can tell, our dog Jack is now SND - Senior Neighborhood Dog - in the Tartan Glen section of Liberty Park. The octet of cul de sacs along the spine of Caledonian Way holds some 50 residences.

I guesstimate a couple dozen are doghouses: at least one family member a canine. Dianne and I here 13 years, Jack moved in almost a dozen years ago. In the way of generations, we have seen dogs come and go.

There is camaraderie of dog walkers around here. Even when sketchy on one another’s names, most know and are known by our dog names: Jazz, Harper, Bogart, Buddy, Gracie, Reuben, of course Jack, and more. At times visiting grand dogs such as: Mrs. Garrett’s Archie; our Buddy, Otto, and before long likely Riley.

In recent months, a goodly number of our beloved furry companions have left for what God has prepared for faithful doggies: Neighbor/ Canterbury member Janice Windham’s Zoey; other neighbors’ Milo, Katie, Bailey, Emmie, and Pepper.

In the comings/goings of our doggy generations, are two new Lily’s, one succeeding Milo, the other for Katie. Janice tells me a presently unnamed Havanese is on the way to carry on for Cavalier Zoey.

This is only a partial registry of past, present, and future Tartan Glen K-9s. To name the breeds/mixes would at best be partial guesswork. Suffice it to say, two general camps. LPYD and LPMD: smallish Liberty Park Yippy Dogs and largish Liberty Park Mellow Dogs.

I’ve noticed that people who don’t otherwise have much in common find common cause in enjoyment of our dogs…even more, common grief in the loss of our dogs, which we all dread and grieve.

Dianne, who doggedly tries to order my random-scandom of books, has our dog books fairly well sequestered on several shelves: fiction and nonfiction hero dogs; others ‘to get inside’ a dog’s psyche and soma to explain their genus and genius.

Whatever your take on the evolutionary connection between wild wolves and domesticated dogs, I like our son Bailey’s view. It’s not so much the dogs that humans have domesticated, but us Homosapiens the dogs have domesticated.

A case can be made that naturally bellicose humans have been made kinder by our naturally kind dogs. Many note that most mean dogs are not born but are made that way by some human. EG: the meanness some humans put into naturally born kind Pit Bulls.

The tortured life of 19th century, opioid poet Francis Thompson is usually known by his haunting poem The Hound of Heaven. The verses depict God’s relentless love as a dog that will not give up the hunt for us, no matter what messes or tangles we are in.

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days…

Down the arches of the years…down the labyrinthine ways…

Of my mind and tears, I hid from him…

Those strong Feet followed…with unhurrying chase…

Deliberate speed, majestic intimacy…”

Maybe a stretch, and I mean no sacrilege by connecting the ‘generations’ of Jesus, those who came before and us who come after him, with the generations of dogs in our lives. But many, for sure not all, have experienced, even been inspired to show, the unconditional love of God in our hounds for the bellicose humans within and around us. Doxology: for the dogs of God and the God of dogs.