Dog-Kissed Tears

Description:
""It is 4:00 a.m. the day after Rosa died.
I am wide-awake from a brief and troubled sleep.""

This book explores the loss of a dear friend and companion-a remarkable fifteen-year-old retriever named Rosa.

Many people form deep attachments to their pets. Yet we wonder how to celebrate our friendships with them and how to grieve their death. Dog-Kissed Tears is a meditative memoir woven from life with Rosa. In stories that are funny, sad, moving, and honest, Lambert Zuidervaart links his attachment to his beloved dog and his love for human friends. Familiar songs help him trace his personal journey through the adoption, life, and death of a canine companion. As Lambert works through grief and longing for Rosa, he connects memories of childhood with self-discoveries in middle age.

Dog-Kissed Tears weaves a lyrical narrative of friendship, loss, and healing. Its spiritual undercurrent is subtle but profound.


Endorsements:
""This gentle threnody about losing a loved companion melts the reader's heart. The grieving eulogy of Rosa, Golden Labrador Retriever, whose welcoming, friendly spirit taught its adopted care-taker how to be comforted in losing parents and close friends to the adversary of Death is both intimately revealing and truly moving. No wonder God loves animals (Job 40-41), who can teach us humans to form a young heart open to all.""
--Calvin Seerveld
Senior Member of Philosophical Aesthetics, emeritus
Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto

""Humans have a complex relationship with animals. We construct a hierarchy with humans at the top blessed with intelligence and self-awareness. Animals exist at the bottom, deemed unintelligent, lacking self-awareness, and therefore subject to human control. Zuidervaart opens up such a construction through reflections on a powerful relationship with his dog, Rosa. A bond forged from love, acceptance, and openness freed Zuidervaart to embrace places within himself previously unexplored, thus deepening his spiritual relationship with self, others, and God.""
--Abigail Johnson
author of Reflecting with God and Shaping Spiritual Leaders

""Poignant, intelligent, and heart-felt, this memoir of life with Rosa, the author's Golden/Labrador Retriever mix, is a balm for the grieving soul of anyone who has ever loved and lost a special animal companion. Lambert's creative journey of mourning is filled with spiritual and musical references, giving us a helpful model to approach our own struggles to cope with loss, and heal our broken hearts.""
--Deborah Antinori
author of Journey Through Pet Loss

""In this beautifully written book, Lambert Zuidervaart describes with warmth and openness a dog's very special gift--the ability to join and interweave family, friends, and nature together in love and respect. Read this book and you will gain a new appreciation of the healing power of dogs.""
--M. Christine Zink
Director, Department of Molecular and Comparative Pathobiology, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine


About the Contributor(s):
Lambert Zuidervaart is Professor of Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and a member of the graduate faculties in the Toronto School of Theology and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Art in Public (2011), Social Philosophy after Adorno (2007), and Artistic Truth (2004); a founding member of the Toronto Beach Chorale; and the former president of the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan.