There may be a little more litter and trash in our neighborhood

I mentioned in my previous post that it has been a hard year. I feel guilty saying that because there are so many people so much worse off than my family and I. Other people are hungry. Other people have terrible diseases. Other people don't have clean water to drink. Other people live under repressive governments. Other people are not allowed to worship God or acknowledge their faith in Jesus Christ. Other people have lost hope. I could go on and on. But we have had a bad year all the same.  

Our dog Charlie died on Tuesday, November 19, 2013. We will miss him forever but it has been especially hard since that day. It was a somber Thanksgiving for us and Christmas was just not the same without him. My son always bought him a huge rawhide bone for Christmas and we always had a wonderful time when Charlie got that bone and immediately decided he needed to go out in his yard to chew on it for a while and then bury it to hide it from us. The bone was so big, it was hard for him to get it out of the house. You could see him figuring out the problem and coming up with solutions. Then, the look on his face as he made sure that we weren't following him so he could hide it in a secret place was priceless.

My title comes from the fact that Charlie insisted on going for a walk every morning. I always took a recycled plastic shopping bag with us to hold his poop because I didn't want to leave it laying around along the sidewalk and I knew that no one else wanted to see it, either. The bag was large enough to hold other things and when Charlie would point out trash along our path, I would put it into the bag to be thrown in the garbage can when we got home. In that way, Charlie did a service to our neighborhood by cleaning up some of the garbage that people throw away as they walk or drive in our town. Now, I haven't walked since the day he left us and when I do finally start walking again, I won't be taking a plastic bag with me so the trash won't be getting picked up like it was before.

Or maybe I should. Charlie started a good thing and why shouldn't I continue it in his name? I should continue to pick up trash along the streets that Charlie walked each day for his sake. He would have wanted his streets to look nice so other dogs can take walks there without the worry of them picking up something to eat that they shouldn't.