Four Years Ago Today

On December 18, 2005, I made my first real post on my own blog. It was, unsurprisingly, about Chet Baker, and it was called Chet Likes Ice. It featured a photo of a svelte, shiny one-year-old Boston terrier, poised on the brink of modest Internet stardom (but not an awful fall...)

Photo by Bill Thompson III.

Before he was a stah, when his ears still flopped over. Wish I'd been bloggin' then.

One Thousand One Hundred Forty-Three posts later, I am still rhapsodizing about Chet Baker. He is lying under the small tent made by my legs as I sit in bed, and he is chewing a Nylabone. He's a little gray around the eyebrows, and so am I. We've both done a lot of growing up.


After a certain point, it seems silly to mark a blogaversary. I'm in a reflective mood, but not enough to go on and on about what blogging means to me. I'm just glad you've been there to read and give me your feedback, to help me think about things that bug or amuse or outrage me. I'm glad I could give you a break from your day or a virtual escape to the woods and fields. I've tried to keep the quality and information content high, and if I wasn't up to that, to keep it light and happy and fun. I know there are five million other things you could be doing, and I don't want to waste your time.

I'm also glad that I started this blog when Chet was a mere year old. I have archives of stuff on him, the most bodacious dogjournal you could imagine, and the photos to back it up, all backed up. Hmmm.

Imagine...sometimes I do.

So I have a question for you, a little test-market thingie, kind of a fourth blogaversary present you can give me. 1,143 posts. And all I want is a lil' comment out of you.

If I wrote a book about Chet Baker, and it had a bunch of photos of him like you see here, and funny or moving or gripping stories like you get here, but it also had some really fleshed out thoughts about the human-dog connection, and what dogs mean to people, and the kind of comfort that dogs offer to us, would you buy it? If so, how many copies would you buy? :D

Please tell the cute doggeh. He wants to know. Is there a book in Chet Baker and Mether?



Because on down the road I'm going to have to sell this idea to people who may not exactly get that Chet Baker is the livin' end, the best doggeh in the universe, that you'd drop everything and rush out to buy a book about him so you could keep him and his cuteness on your bookshelf or at your bedside forever. I'll need your testimonials, your encouragement, to print out and throw at my skeptics in what I hope will be a fluttering blizzard of yeahyeahyeah!!!

In other news, I am using this fourth anniversary to give myself a break from blogging, to tend to health, hearth and home. The online life is fun, and I've loved it, but I need to regroup, get my nose off the screen, do some painting, drawing, walking, writing, thinking; to live with my family in real time.

If four years of Greyfriar's Bobby-like faithfulness to this odd unpaid job is any indication--showing up five days a week, rain or shine, storing posts madly even when I'm leaving on a huge trip--I'll probably come back sooner rather than later, bursting with new stories and images, so hang in there.

Thanks for everything. If you start jonesing, there are always those 1,143 posts in the archives to work through. Start in December 2005, work your way on through (remembering to start at the bottom of the page and scroll up) and enjoy!

Baker kisses,

Julie and Chet Baker, my Dogstar