I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.

I'm a dog person. I'm a dog person.

I know the dogs in my neighborhood, sometimes without knowing their owners.

It's not unusual for me to bend down and greet the dogs,

petting them and calling them very good boys and very sweet girls,

before realizing I've barely acknowledged the human being holding the leash.

I grew up with a black lab named Tasha.

My parents got her when I was a baby, so we grew up together,

and she lived until we were both 14.

She lived to be a gentle old lady with a silver muzzle, whatever 14 times 7 is in dog years.

My Boston Terrier, Phoebe, is about to turn 11, so if she were a human, she'd be a 77-year-old woman.

If Phoebe were one of the golden girls, she'd probably be rose, quirky, loyal, a little dim-witted. We adopted her from a Boston

Terrier Rescue Organization when she was one and a half in the spring of 2016. When people assumed that the best thing to happen to me in 2016 was my poem Good Bones

going viral, I have to correct them.

Good bones changed my life, to be sure.

But the best thing to happen to me that year was Phoebe. As she grows older,

silver muzzle now too, I get emotional when I'm reminded that my years with her are limited.

We only have so much time. Today's poem is by one of my favorite Kentucky

writers, a fellow dog person. For you who have loved old dogs by Silas House.

Old Andy is a big dog, black as a night sky in the most lonesome winter months.

He is fat, even though he doesn't eat much these days.

His man is one of the best folks I know.

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